Press Release - June 5, 2009
Bienestar Receives United Way Award!

HILLSBORO, Ore. – We are pleased to announce that Bienestar has received a grant from the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette for the Semillas de Éxito/Seeds for Success Program for 2009—2012.  Only 37 programs were selected in this round of United Way awards so the competition was very intense.  We owe our success in winning this grant and are grateful to:

• Bienestar staff Gracie Garcia, Maria Moreno, Jorge Tello, Juan Carlos Aguilera for their incredible work with the Promotores program funded by United Way for the last 3 years.  The success that you demonstrated to United Way in managing their investment over 3 years, and earning the 2008 Community Agency of the Year award positioned us for success in this round of funding.  The many hours of staff brainstorming, planning, partner meetings to develop the program design model for Seeds for Success meant that we had a comprehensive, holistic program for adults to present to United Way;

• Ann Blaker, our grantwriter, who labored for several weeks on our United Way grant applications to make them compelling and convincing within very limited page constraints to produce an excellent case for support;

• Gracie Garcia, Bridget Cooke of Adelante Mujeres, and Mary Lewis of Oregon Employment Department who helped me present the case for support to the Vision Council panel at United Way once we were selected as a finalist;

• Our partners in the Seeds for Success program who signed partnership agreements with us and worked for weeks in developing a powerful program model to meet the needs of our residents:

Adelante Mujeres, ASHA International, Banner Bank, Dress for Success,  KeyBank, Oregon Employment Department Farmworker Services, Wells Fargo Bank.

Bienestar will receive $130,000 a year for 3 years beginning July 1, 2009 to implement this program that includes 8 program elements:

• Success with Work/Éxito con Trabajo – our rapid re-employment program
• Helping Families Survive in Economic Crisis/Superviviencia – creates an emergency cash assistance fund for residents
• Microenterprise Project/Negocios Pequeños – organic farming training/production/marketing project with Adelante Mujeres
• New Careers/Carreras Nuevas – a new job training program to train residents for jobs as caregivers
• Seeds of Prosperity/Semillas de Prosperidad – our 3 year financial literacy program
• Computers for Success/Éxito con Computación – onsite basic and intermediate computer classes
• Earned Income Tax Credit Campaign/Éxito con Impuestos – free volunteer tax preparation
• English Language Skills/ Éxito con Inglés – Classes in English language skills for residents
• Maintaining Mental Health/Éxito con Bienestar Mental – new program in mental health awareness, outreach, education
• Emotional Intelligence/ Éxito con EQ – new program in emotional intelligence training for Promotores and residents

We are so grateful for the support of United Way , and very excited to be able to continue programs for our adult residents that we have begun and to implement the new ones working with old and new partners to achieve our mission of building housing, hope and futures for the well-being of working families.

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