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SEPTEMBER 2015 CONNECTING PEOPLE WHO CARE WITH CAUSES THAT MATTER

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY SJCWINS 2015 LEIGHTON AWARDThe Community Foundation recognizes Habitat’s outstanding work with our 2015 Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence.

HAPPY FAMILIES Walk into Habitat for Humanity’s conference room in their office on South Street, and you’ll feel like you’re walking into a crowd of happy people. The walls are covered with photos of Habitat’s Partner Families—families who have studied the essentials of home ownership, worked side-by-side with volunteers to build their homes, and, ultimately, purchased those homes with zero-percent interest loans. The broad smiles on their faces tell you how they feel about their experiences with Habitat.

That’s supported by statistics. Out of the 171 homes that Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County has built since it formed in 1986, 85 percent of the homeowners are still in those original homes. In part, that’s because Habitat builds great houses with full basements, garages, and

architectural details that reflect the character of the neighborhoods that surround them. It’s also because of the emphasis that Habitat places on the volunteer experience. Partner Families work alongside community volunteers, putting hundreds of hours of work into

HIGHLIGHTS

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Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County work together on a house on South Bend’s near southwest side. This particular build was sponsored by the Tire Rack.

This year’s Community Foundation 2015 Performing Arts Series at the Chris Wilson Pavilion in Potawatomi Park wrapped up on Aug. 29, celebrating a sixth year of free performances by some of our community’s best arts organizations. This year’s biggest event was the South Bend Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Aug. 22, which drew an audience of 1,300 and included a “play-along” of Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus” that featured 50 community musicians and more than a dozen Habitat for Humanity volunteers.

Music & Memory, a program that uses music to help nursing home residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia reconnect with the present, was featured in a recent front-page South Bend Tribune article about the program’s implementation at Healthwin. The Community Foundation has been providing training and materials for local nursing homes to implement this effective internationally-recognized program.

ESTABLISHED: 1999

VALUE: $150,00 endowment challenge grant, with an additional $25,000 cash prize

AWARDED: Biennially

PURPOSE: The largest award of its kind in the nation, the Leighton Award recognizes and celebrates the outstanding achievement of a local nonprofit and motivates all charities in our community to pursue excellence

LEARN MORE: www.cfsjc.org.

The Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence

Jackie, a Saint Mary’s College student, shares songs with a Healthwin resident as part of the Music & Memory program.

COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY • PAGE 2

HABITAT continued from p. 1

As part of the Leighton Award Process, we’ve named two Special Recognition winners, each of which receive an award of $10,000. Special Recognition awards are intended to encourage organizations that are pursuing higher degrees of excellence, recognizing inspiring examples of service and performance.

The Community Foundation’s first 2015 Special Recognition Award goes to Hope Ministries, in recognition of its outstanding Hope4Kids program, which offers high-quality care and education for the young children of Hope residents. Hope 4Kids uses the High Scope curriculum, and was the first program of its kind in Indiana to receive High Scope certification.

The Foundation’s second 2015 Special Recognition Award goes to the Center for the Homeless, in honor of the Robert L. Miller Sr. Veterans Center and its remarkable programs and advocacy in service of our community’s veterans.

Special Recognition Awards to Hope, CFH

constructing a house from the ground up. Since Habitat began building homes in St. Joseph County, more than 19,000 volunteers have been part of that intensely rewarding process.

DONORS Habitat has a broad, dedicated base of donors, too, as evidenced by its strong showing for Give Local St. Joseph County, the Community Foundation’s 24-hour fundraising event held in May. Habitat raised $289,000—the third highest total of the more than 50 local charities that participated. It also placed among the top 10 most successful Give Local campaigns that took place throughout the United States.

Jim Williams, Habitat’s executive director, was particularly pleased with the organization’s Give Local success because he’s committed to growing the organization’s endowment with the Community Foundation.

“Our whole goal is to be a sustainable organization,” Williams says.

RESTORES Habitat’s two ReStores are bringing the organization closer to that goal every day. The stores sell new and used building materials, appliances, furniture, paint, and other items, generating revenue which helps

Learn more—and help Habitat match its $150,000 Leighton Award challenge grant—at www.cfsjc.org.

SBSO’s Maestro Tsung Yeh (right) jokes with Habitat’s Executive Director Jim Williams (left) and Senior Site Manager Gerry Gardetto (center) during the Symphony’s Aug. 22 performance of Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus,” which featured more than a dozen Habitat volunteers playing “construction instruments”—including Jim on the anvil.

support the organization’s mission. In an additional benefit, the ReStores repurpose construction materials that would otherwise end up in landfills. Local ReStore profits have doubled since 2010; the Mishawaka ReStore had the highest sales numbers of all 24 ReStores in Indiana in 2014.

Despite stiff competition from more than a dozen additional applicants, Habitat’s remarkable growth, success, and service earned the organization the 2015 Leighton Award.

“Our local Habitat for Humanity is creating ever more powerful ripple benefits under the leadership of Jim Williams and its many wonderful staff and volunteers. Habitat is building community in all the best ways,” says Rose Meissner, the Community Foundation’s president.

Painting at Hope4Kids, the early childhood care and education program at Hope Ministries

“Habitat is building community in all the best ways,” says Rose Meissner, president of the Community Foundation.

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Through teacher assessments, training, and support, the Foundation’s Early Years Count is creating a brighter future for local children.

It’s been more than a decade since the Community Foundation launched the Early Years Count Education Initiative. Since the beginning, we’ve known that

high-quality early childhood education means better chances for children—not only in school, but throughout their lives. That certainty has spurred us not only to maintain our commitment to the Early Years Count over the years, but to grow that level of investment as new opportunities emerged. Now, in 2015, we’re seeing the dramatic, heartening effects of our perseverance in local preschool and elementary programs.

EARLY YEARS COUNT: COMMITTED TO OUR YOUNGEST LEARNERS

• In 2005, when the Community Foundation began its focused investment in early childhood education, 1,300 local children benefitted. In Fall 2015, we’ll benefit more than 5,600 children.

• The research-based High Scope Curriculum, used by the Early Years Count, has become the community standard for teaching training and practices.

• The Early Years Count has extended its quality focus to elementary schools through Responsive Classroom, an evidence-based approach to teacher effectiveness which has grown from five to nine schools in the past year, involving 144 teachers.

• Quality is the new community norm. Due to more than a decade of Early Years Count assessments, training, and coaching, teachers are scoring better on assessments than ever, and programs are more focused on promoting, maintaining, and growing quality.

Quick Facts: The Early Years Count

“It’s hard to know where we would be without the Early Years Count. Your team has encouraged, inspired, and taught me so many new things that have improved the quality of our program.”

“Quality has certainly improved. We have a new standard for how we operate.”

“I have nothing but respect and admiration for the ladies that work with all of us and encourage, support, coach, and train us all. They are the reason that so many childcare centers are thriving and making a difference in these young lives.”

Quotes from Local Teachers about the Early Years Count

In partnership with Ann Rosen, Sue Christensen, and the excellent staff at the Family Connection, we’ve built relationships and trust with early childhood educators and administrators throughout the county. We’ve provided High Scope assessments, training, and coaching for teachers, as well as resources for their classrooms—support that continues from year to year. In 2014-15, we began to extend the Early Years Count into elementary schools through Responsive Classroom, an evidence-based approach to teacher effectiveness. That means that many children now transition from High Scope preschools into Responsive Classroom elementary schools, where teachers reinforce and build on what they’ve already learned. This year, more than 5,600 children will benefit directly from the Early Years Count.

Thanks to the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, the Jon and Sonja Laidig Foundation, and anonymous donors, we’ve been able to invest more than $9 million in early childhood. It’s a commitment that’s making the future brighter for our community’s children.

Harrison Primary Center is one of the schools using Responsive Classroom, a teacher effectiveness program that emphasizes social skills as well as academic skills.

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Two of the Community Foundation’s most popular scholarships—the Jon and Sonja Laidig Community Service Scholarship and the Charles Martin “Touch a Life” Scholarship—include paid summer internships. Served with local nonprofits, these internships provide valuable work experience while also allowing scholars to “give back” to their communities.

Olivia Griggs, a first-year student at Saint Mary’s College, is one of this year’s 16 Laidig scholars. She interned with Hope Ministries, tutoring adults

who were pursuing their GEDs.

In that role, she learned something every day, Olivia says. “The root of the service is loving people. Listening to them, so you can begin to understand what they’re going through.”

Laurie Hart, Hope’s Adult Education Coordinator, supervised Olivia’s work.

“Olivia was great at developing relation-ships with the students she worked with,” Laurie says. “That’s important.”

Charles Martin scholar Jenna Thomas

Scholarship Recipients Make a Big Difference with Summer Internships

Olivia Griggs (right) with Jean, one of the GED students whom she worked with this summer.

served her internship at Hope, too, with Hope4Kids, a high-quality care and education program for the young children of Hope residents. Hope4Kids uses the High Scope curriculum.

“I really loved working with the kids,” Jenna says. “Playing with them, interacting with them—They see your face and get so excited.”

Jenna is in her second year at Indiana University Bloomington, studying marketing and entrepreneurship. She also teaches swim classes at IU, and points out that some aspects of High Scope work well with adults, too.

“Like the kids, my swimmers respond well when I give them choices,” she says. “It gives them a sense of having more control over their environment.”

This summer, 15 other scholars worked in internships with organizations including Youth Service Bureau, Habitat for Humanity, Saint Margaret’s House, Camp Millhouse, and others.

You can support Community Foundation scholarship programs at www.cfsjc.org.

17 Community Foundation scholars held paid internships with local charities this summer.