Empowering Women, Encouraging Success focuses on securing stable employment and safe housing for women living in recovery. Our approach will include multiple methods to address the issues, as well as key collaborations in the community including SCC and BIC Construction. This would allow us to to develop an approach that will focus on employment and what we term "Step Down Housing" that will lift our clients and their families out of poverty. Our partnerships with SCC and BIC will allow us to collaborate and take advantage of opportunities our clients currently do not know exist and that are often intimidating to pursue.

We believe there is a better way to achieve a bright future for our clients as well as assist local businesses in filling an abundance of open positions. The positions this grant will fund are what we will call Peer Recovery positions. The grant will allow us to hire 1 full-time employee who focuses on Education/Training and Employment and 1 part-time Peer Navigator whose focus will be employment/education. Peer refers to a person with lived experience in recovery and who can work with clients from a place of genuine understanding. Peer staff have incredible success working with our clients, and we are excited to see how much impact these two positions will have. We will employ two graduates of our program who have a minimum of two years of sobriety. This grant will support employment, housing, self-sufficiency and success for our clients and for employers in the community.