Community Partners
Catholic Charities of Wichita
Established in 1943 by the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, Catholic Charities has been a stabilizing force in the community, providing critical services to those in need. In 2009, Catholic Charities continued its commitment to serving those less fortunate by reaching out to more than 25,000 individuals.
With hundreds of volunteers each year and more than 100 staff members working to address issues such as homelessness, families in crisis, domestic violence, adults with special needs, adoption and crisis pregnancies, strengthening relationships, and immigration assistance, Catholic Charities has effectively reached out to tens of thousands of individuals and families through the years.
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Boys & Girls Clubs of South Central Kansas
Around the country, Boys & Girls Clubs have been providing creative programs for youth for more than 100 years. The scope of the Boys & Girls Club movement in the U.S. now serves more than 5 million school age children every day through some 3600 facilities. Boys & Girls Clubs provide a safe haven and stimulating environment for kids in our community. Youth development professionals provide guidance, support and supervision for activities to age appropriate groups. As a partner on this grant, boys & Girls Club participate in after school activities of Start Strong Wichita and provide healthy relationship curriculums Passport to Manhood and Smart Girls for 11-14 years in the program.
Around the country, Boys & Girls Clubs have been providing creative programs for youth for more than 100 years. The scope of the Boys & Girls Club movement in the U.S. now serves more than 5 million school age children every day through some 3600 facilities. Boys & Girls Clubs provide a safe haven and stimulating environment for kids in our community. Youth development professionals provide guidance, support and supervision for activities to age appropriate groups.
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Choose Respect
As a partner on this grant, Choose Respect continues to be the name of our student leadership teams at the middle and high schools. Choose Respect has been an optional organization for student leaders to join to help build positive healthy relationships in the schools.
Choose Respect is designed to encourage positive action on the part of adolescents to form healthy, respectful relationships. Research for the initiative shows most adolescents have positive, healthy attitudes about their relationships with others. Choose Respect seeks to reinforce and sustain these positive attitudes among adolescents as they get older and begin to enter dating relationships by:
• Providing effective messages for adolescents, parents, caregivers and teachers that encourage them to choose to treat themselves and others with respect.
• Creating opportunities for adolescents and parents to learn about positive relationship behaviors.
• Increasing adolescents’ ability to recognize and prevent unhealthy, violent relationships.
• Promoting ways for a variety of audiences to get information and other tools to prevent dating abuse.
Family Violence Prevention Fund
As a partner on this grant Family Violence Prevention Fund serves as the National Program Office for all eleven communities with the Start Strong funding. Their role is to work closely with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to filter information down to the eleven communities and provide them with the technical support necessary to make this project successful.
The Family Violence Prevention Fund works to prevent violence within the home, and in the community to help those whose lives are devastated by violence because everyone as the right to live free of violence.
For more than three decades, the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) has worked to end violence against women and children around the world. Instrumental in developing the landmark Violence Against Women Act passed by Congress in 1994, the FVPF has continued to break new ground by reaching new audiences including men and youth, promoting leadership within communities to ensure that violence prevention efforts become self-sustaining, and transforming the way health care providers, police, judges, employers and others address violence.
Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence
As a partner on this project Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence was the front runner in providing Catholic Charities of Wichita funding to do teen dating violence prevention with the DELTA grant in 2003.
The purpose of the Coalition is the prevention and elimination of sexual and domestic violence through a statewide network of programs providing support and safety for all victims of sexual and domestic violence and stalking, with primary focus on women and their children; direct services; public awareness and education; advocacy for victims; comprehensive prevention; and, social change efforts.
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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
As the main funder for the Start Strong grant, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had the foresight to see teen dating violence as a health issue and proceeded to make funds available for communities to develop prevention strategies.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. For more than 35 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. Helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need the Foundation expects to make a difference in our lifetime.
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That’s Not Cool
As a partner with this project, thatsnotcool.com will be a website Start Strong Wichita will promote in our middle schools to help students learn where to draw the digital line.
The Family Violence Prevention Fund’s That’s Not Cool campaign, created in partnership with the Advertising Council and the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, is designed to start a conversation among teens about how controlling behavior and harassment from a boyfriend or girlfriend, online or via cell phone, can turn into abuse.
That’s Not Cool uses examples of control, pressure, or abuse that occur in the digital world to help teens draw their own line on what is appropriate, or not, in their intimate relationships.
Your mobile, IM, and online accounts are all a part of you, and when someone you’re dating is controlling, disrespecting, or pressuring you in those spaces…
THAT’S NOT COOL!
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WASAC – Wichita Area Sexual Assault Coalition
As a partner on this grant, Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center works with Catholic Charities to educate youth of the link between sexual assault and teen dating violence.
The Wichita Area Sexual Assault Center has two areas of purpose. The first is to provide support, information and referral to people victimized by sexual assault and child sexual abuse, their families and friends, as well as anyone who has a concern in that area. The second area is to promote an awareness of sexual assault in the community in an effort to foster sensitivity to people who have been victimized and promote awareness/prevention by offering training and consultation to other area professionals.
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Wichita State University (Department of Sociology & CCSR)
Department of Sociology – As partners on this grant, WSU Department of Sociology provides the needed research on this project through the use of focus groups, surveys and analysis.
Center for Community Support & Research – As a partner on this grant, WSU Center for Community Support & Research provides the project with technical support for development of strategic planning and meeting support.
Wichita State University is committed to providing comprehensive educational opportunities in an urban setting. Through teaching, scholarship and public service the University seeks to equip both students and the larger community with the educational and cultural tools they need to thrive in a complex world, and to achieve both individual responsibility in their own lives and effective citizenship in the local, national and global community
Wichita Public Schools
As a partner on this grant Wichita Public Schools works with Start Strong through a shared staff member of the Safe & Drug Free Schools Department. This staff member serves as the School Liaison to help assist with the implementation of the healthy relationship curriculum in the schools and all other school related activities of Start Strong.
The Board of Education, Superintendent John Allison, and the district’s leadership team are committed to excellence in public education. The work of Wichita Public Schools is to empower all students with the 21st century skills and knowledge necessary for success by providing a coherent, rigorous, safe and nurturing, culturally responsive, and inclusive learning community.
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YMCA of Wichita
As a partner on the grant the YMCA after school program in the target middle schools.
The YMCA has been dedicated to holistic health and development throughout our long and storied over 150 year history. That commitment has taken on new urgency amidst our country’s severe health crisis, a crisis brought about by a myriad of factors. The most evident- physical inactivity and unhealthy eating-are within our power to influence. Solutions to this crisis are individual and systemic-from making better choices in our daily lives to encountering healthier options in our schools, workplaces and communities, from physical education in schools to walkways and parks in housing developments. The YMCA is in a strong position to influence change in individuals and in communities.
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Blue Shield of California Foundation
As a partner to the project, Blue Shield of California Foundation funds one of the California Start Strong sites.
Blue shield of California Foundation is committed to making health care effective, safe, and accessible for all Californians, and to ending domestic violence. The Foundation seeks to spur innovation, build partnerships necessary to advance systems change, strengthen safety net providers and networks, foster policy solutions, and cultivate the leaders of tomorrow. In 2010, the Foundation is focusing its funding on two program areas: Health Care and Coverage and Blue Shield Against Violence.
