where dreams take flight - Community Foundation of Tompkins County

an evolving record of sustainable change: 2004 community grants update
The History Center
The History Center’s student historian program continues to expand, building on the initial Student Historian Initiative grant from the
Community Foundation. Using the personal stories and historical artifacts of local experience to link high school students, along with
their teachers and parents, to the community in an inspiring and informational way, the center’s goal of developing county-wide
relationships is being realized. The early support of the Community Foundation was an essential component in launching the Student
Historian Initiative and contributed, in 2004, to student historians receiving the Tompkins County Distinguished Youth Award and the
center’s director being honored by the American Association of Museums.
The Women’s Opportunity Center
For the past twenty-five years, the Women’s Opportunity Center’s client base has included unmarried women and men who have separated
from their partners. The Community Foundation stepped in with emergency transitional funding when services to this group
were threatened by New York State’s abrupt decision to switch to federal funding requiring
“Thank you for helping
this vision become reality—
transforming ideas into
action in a sustainable
community-based manner.”
couples to be or have been married. By bridging the funding gap, the Community
Foundation made it possible for services to remain in place while the center laid the
groundwork for alternative funding that would allow them to continue serving displaced
homemakers regardless of their marital status. The Women’s Opportunity Center in
Tompkins County was the only one of twenty centers statewide to provide uninterrupted
services.
The Village at Ithaca
The Village at Ithaca, funded by the Community Foundation in collaboration with the
Tauck Foundation, used the initial funding from its three-year grant to hire a part-time
coordinator. Having someone in that position increases the organization’s internal capacity
to manage the many volunteers whose contributions are needed to make the “it takes a
village” vision real. New initiatives—including a website (to be launched in Fall ’05), the Youth Committee of the Village (teen leaders
supporting other youth), and an online database of existing resources for families and youth (to pilot in Fall ’05)—are also being facilitated,
in part, by the Village at Ithaca’s ability to hire a coordinator.
—A NOTE FROM THE VILLAGE AT ITHACA
The Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance
The Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance (IBCA) receives some 3,500 phone calls a year, many of them from women in need of timely
assistance. With its newly installed telephone system, funded by a grant from the Community Foundation, staff members no longer
have to worry about losing calls or being unable to retrieve messages. Voice mail confidentiality and speed of message delivery are
ensured now that IBCA’s antiquated crash-prone telephone system has been replaced.
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