Supporting those raising the next generation.

Our work often leads us to fund grants around initiatives for children and teens. Places that can make a difference earlier in a child's life. But we also know the support for parents in our society is severely lacking. We learned alot from our past work with single mothers and the RISE 2.0 initiative. We wondered if there were ways to bolster parent support in our own community. If parents are healthier and more supported, children would directly benefit. 

What began as focus groups of community parents, caregivers, and those involved in the lives of children and teens, became a multi-year initiative. The start of our Parenting work began in 2019 with focus groups of parents, doctors, teachers, agency leaders, caregivers, and more. We listened to their experiences and insights into what support they needed most and what that could look like in action. As you can imagine, many ideas came out of the focus groups.

Across nine focus groups and listening to well over 100 participants, it became clear that connection, conversations and sense of community were common threads of need among parents. These were also areas we could infuse resources and expertise. Then COVID. The need for connection and community grew even more while opportunities were limited. Through a partnership with Go Valley Kids, Go Oshkosh Kids was created. GOK was designed to serve as a local resource hub to connect families to community education, experts, and ideas that can help them be healthy, happy and successful.

In addition to the online platform with articles and blog posts sharing local resources + opportunities, our “Let’s Talk” podcast incorporated discussions with local experts on topics that parents were curious about. It allowed the info shared to have a conversational feel, yet allow parents to listen at their convenience.

Knowing our efforts around parenting support would differ from our traditional grant work and require a multiyear effort, our board approved $40,000 towards the parenting initiative. As planned, the Women’s Fund grant transitioned out of funding the GOK website and podcasts at the end of 2023; the Go Valley Kids team is now responsible for the content and funding of the resource. We are very proud of the resources and connections that were built with families throughout our partnership with GVK + GOK.