Voices from the Valley: A podcast of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region

Housing: A Plan Forward

Imagine if all residents can live in a good home they can afford. Our region is composed of households across the income spectrum, and it's getting harder to find these homes.

High-quality, stable housing is central to the health and wellbeing of all families in our communities. A new Fox Cities and Greater Outagamie County Regional Housing Strategy was developed in 2022 as the result of a study done in our communities. Over the next decade, our region needs roughly 11-thousand to nearly 18 thousand new dwelling units just to keep up with the estimated population growth. In this episode, we'll discuss the plan forward, thanks to the many who are coming together to take on the challenge. Do you have a role to play in this path forward?

Visit  https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/housing-a-plan-forward/ for the episode show notes.

Kaukauna and King: 50 years Later

What happens when we uncover lost stories and tell them in new ways? And how might shared experiences, between people who are different from one another, bring us closer together? In today’s very special episode we’re going to take you back to a story that happened over 50 years ago. It's the story of an exchange of Black and White high school students in Wisconsin in 1966, right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Black students from Rufus King High School in Milwaukee switched places with White students from Kaukauna High School during a time of heightened racial tensions in our country, and on the wave of big changes. The young people lived in each others' homes, attended classes in each others' schools and took what they learned to the stage, performing Martin Duberman’s groundbreaking play called “In White America” in both cities.  

Today a new generation of high school students are re-living that era in a project called, “The Exchange In White America: Kaukauna & King 50 Years Later.” It's all thanks to journalist and filmmaker Joanne Williams, who had been a student at Rufus King when the exchange took place. She wondered about what happened to the students in the exchange and what their lives were like now and was inspired to embark on a 6-year journey to create a documentary film, which involved a revival of the play 50 years later by high school students in Milwaukee and Kaukauna.  

 Two weeks ago during Black History Month, over 1,000 people in the Fox Valley area had the chance to view the film and participate in conversations with the  filmmaker Joanne as part a Northeast WI premiere tour.

More episode notes at:  https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/kaukauna-and-king-50-years-later/

Clintonville’s Compassionate Connections

In many rural areas of the Fox Valley region, there are often serious gaps in services such as transportation, healthcare, and other services meant to help individuals and families that might be struggling economically.  Clintonville's Compassionate Connection Center, a nonprofit we partner with here at the Community Foundation, is working to bridge those gaps. In this episode we learn how an entire community is coming together under the guiding principle that everyone deserves the same opportunities and to be treated with personal dignity and respect.

The Compassionate Connections Center provides access to basic necessities like clothing, food, diapers, formula, emergency relief, home repairs, and automobile repairs, and provides children with enough food and resources to help support them at home.

Articles

• Compassionate Connections receives funds from Clintonville Community Heroes Award winner
• Clintonville nonprofit hosts trivia night to help provide free back-to-school clothes - WFRV TV

Mental Health: Do You Need Emotional CPR?

We’ve probably all faced an emotional crisis. Something that rocks our world and sends us into a feeling of despair. Just in the last two years alone, people have experienced increased feelings of anxiety, depression, and uncertainty. It's that collective trauma of living in a world that is no longer predictable.

The growing need for emotional support is urgent. In this episode we’re going to talk about a program in the Fox Valley called e-CPR, and, like CPR, it can be a lifesaver. E-CPR is a community education workshop that teaches people how to support another person experiencing an emotional crisis.

 

Program resources, links, and more at  https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/e-cpr-help-for-emotional-crisis/

Inclusion in the Outdoors

The Fox Valley is renowned for our outdoor activities, from lakes and parks to more than 340 miles of trails for use year round. But many people might be surprised to learn that not every member of our community feels safe or welcomed in our outdoor spaces, especially people who are considered historically marginalized, such as people of color, people who speak different languages, people with disabilities, and people who identify as LGBTQ+.  

Why doesn't everyone has the same access to positive outdoor experiences, and what’s being done about it?

More at: https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/inclusion-in-the-outdoors/ 

Our Story: We’ve come a long way!

People of all walks of life have been impacted by the Community Foundation since its founding in 1986. We hear their stories, and we want you to hear them too!

Our Voices from the Valley: A Podcast of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region podcast launched in September, 2021, and we've come a long way in telling the eye-opening, heartstring-pulling stories people and nonprofits in our community have shared with us. 30 episodes later and more than 3,000 downloads from around the world, we are celebrating and sharing the unique facets and challenges of living in our area!

Our Story

Our fledgeling episode was titled Our Story, and we took that opportunity to share how the Community Foundation came to be, what we do, and how we've grown to touch lives throughout the Fox Valley region. Back when we aired this episode, we were still recording our interviews on Zoom, and not able to record in person. In spite of those audio experiments, our mission remains the same: We strengthen our community for current and future generations by helping people make a difference in the lives of all. 

More show notes here:   https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/our-story/

Building For Kids: Three Decades of Empowered Learning

The Building for Kids Children's Museum opened in downtown Appleton in 1992 at the site of the former Prange's building. Thirty years later, the Community Foundation is honored to celebrate being a part of "BFK's" history! Generous gifts from donors with funds within the Community Foundation have supported the museum over the years.

The museum receives around 120,000 visitors annually from all over the world, and is a cultural gem in the Fox Valley communities. Amy and Carolyn visit the museum to talk about what's happening now, and how the museum is embracing the future for generations to come.

Program notes and links at https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/building-for-kids-three-decades-of-empowered-learning/

Ending Period Poverty

"Period Poverty" is a startling reality in the Fox Valley. Did you know that a lack of access to menstrual health products can cause students with periods to miss or be late to class, or feel anxious about period care? Menstrual products are expensive in the U.S., which makes it difficult for people, especially teens, to afford period products. Instead, they may rely on what is supplied by school districts and stored within a school clinic or school nurse’s office.

The Monthlies Project is a new initiative in the Fox Valley aimed at providing menstrual health products to school-aged students and bringing awareness to the issue of period poverty and the educational inequity it creates.

Visit our website for all the resources and links mentioned in this program:

 https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/ending-period-poverty/ 

Our Diverse Workforce

Today we discuss the Fox Valley’s changing workforce and some new initiatives in the works to make sure we’re building and retaining a thriving and diverse workforce. There are lots of job openings, but we're learning that not everyone who wants to work is able to access the jobs we know are open right now.

Covid has impacted some things, like hybrid office schedules. How do we navigate those, while attracting new talent to our area and enticing young people to stick around and not be in a hurry to look outside our communities?

Check out all the links we talked about today here:  https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/our-diverse-workforce/

Northeast Wisconsin’s Maternal Health Disparity

Did you know that black women in our area are five times as likely to die in childbirth? That's according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.

Factors that lead to these life-threatening disparities include the quality of health care, chronic conditions and structural racism and bias, according to the CDC. In Brown County, Black women receive the lowest rates of first-trimester health care and are most likely to have premature births. For women of color like Outagamie County resident Amy Woods, having her four babies was definitely not the storybook birthing experience we often see romantically portrayed in movies and television. 

In this episode we'll hear Amy's story and how these shocking statistics were recently reported by an award-winning journalist who helped bring this issue to light for Northeast Wisconsin, and hope for a healthier future for moms and their babies.

Learn more

• New News Lab - Supporting Local Journalism
• Black women are five times as likely to die in childbirth. Here’s what that looks like in Green Bay
• Maternal Disparity Reports:
  •  Center for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Department of Health Services
  • Aurora BayCare's 2018 Community Needs Assessment 
  • Black Maternal Health legislative package 

Community Links

•  Birth Queen
• Madison365 Earns Six Milwaukee Press Club Awards, Including 2 Gold And 4 Silver

More here: https://www.cffoxvalley.org/podcast/northeast-wisconsins-maternal-health-disparity/