Nycole: Women & Children's Center in Seattle

Nycole* and her child Kwaku* live in Seattle, where skyrocketing rent and gentrification have made it difficult to find and maintain affordable housing. After overcoming several hurdles including homelessness, they found out they'd been approved for a low-income housing unit Nycole applied for several years earlier. Since then, Nycole has become a certified ESL teacher and begun building community with the other families in their property, who all happen to be black women and children. The grant will be used to fund an after-school program for the children of the property, and a weekly sister chat for the moms. Each member of the community has struggled to find affordable housing, and this grant will be used to turn "housing" into "home”. This grant will allow Nycole to create a space for the women and children where they can gather and develop a sense of community, not just among the children of the development (Nycole envisions being able to do screenings of popular movies such as Black Panther) but among the women as well. Nycole and I agree on the invaluable nature of a strong presence of a network of connected women, which is what particularly drew me to her submission. The thought that women in this community, who are working to (or have already!) overcome varying degrees of poverty, trauma and other setbacks, will have a dedicated space in which to come together and foster sisterhood is touching and I look forward to watching this space and community develop and hope to offer continued support for both the women and their children.

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Nycole is accepting additional gifts of supplies for the center as well as any monetary contributions to put towards ongoing costs of running the center, the weekly sister chat, etc. You can purchase from the Amazon Wishlist for this project here and PayPal donations can be sent directly to her at paypal.me/tellerred