Since receiving the mini grant, I have been looking for other ways to encourage ladies to work on their well-being outside of just working out. So I have started to incorporate Fit Mom Tips of the Week, as well as healthy meal options, and then just advice on how to care for yourself as a woman with self-esteem, with confidence, being able to accept where you are now and how you can make yourself better, not just for you, but for your family as a whole, and just helping women to work on themselves as a whole package.

Hello, my name is Tamar Watson and I am the co-creator of the ladybugs art box. It has been a pleasure creating these art boxes for individuals throughout the community. I’ve enjoyed seeing the people’s faces light up, when they received an art box. With this pandemic going on so many people are lacking things for everyday use. Our art boxes it gives them time clear up some space in their heads, they can just sit for hour coloring, painting or even journaling. I am glad we were able to make these ladybugs art boxes for the children and adults.…

Began building Silver Fox Elite Fitness from the ground up by shopping for a few essentials. Also, did some online shopping, or at least research, for mobile fitness equipment. It all felt awesome.

For the Women Helping Women mini-grant, we’ve been very receptive in regards to client mental health needs during this difficult time as it relates to world affairs. Previously, we were offering virtual-only Zumba classes every Monday evening as a COVID-19 safety measure. Now that restrictions have been relaxed, we have recently been able to offer in-person Zumba classes at the park next to our site to great success. Originally, our numbers for virtual Zumba were small but steady. However, since we’ve started offering in-person classes, those numbers have been growing! Our participating clients love in-person Zumba classes and have commented…

The mini grant allowed me to get my “back of store” in order, which includes signing up for and using a new streamlined sales funnel/project creator (HoneyBook), which has made the proposal, contact, and payment progress 1000x smoother. This also makes my business, SPARC Guidance, more professional and helped me establish contracts for trainings/coaching sessions with Early Head Start via the Early Learning Coalition. I am also now able to offer family coaching sessions and I hope to expand SPARC to the School District next.

I recently was really worried about the artist submissions for the ball. At first we have only 12 submissions. Then we had 24 submissions as of March 26. I was worried that we would not have a lot of people to sign up (since the Call to Art was over with on the 5th of April). Two days before the call ended, I was notified that we had over 108 submissions! This was all thanks to the marketing from myself, the reposting from different orgs like BeWell and the Arts Warehouse. I also spent time everyday emailing different artists and…

Family Caregiver One (FC1): “Amazing, thank you so much”. This is one of the initial response Each Starfish Matters (ESM), received from FC1 after she received a care package. As we listened, we heard that FC1 is caring for her mother. Her mother is 84 years old and is experiencing the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. FC1 does not have any siblings and she has a fulltime job. Luckily for FC1 her work schedule is flexible. However, the demands of her job required that some of her meetings were late evening. She told us that her lifestyle now resolves around her…

Thanks to the support of the Healthier Neighbors mini grant, I was able to Fast Track my training as a Silver Sneakers Flex instructor. I can now offer culturally relevant fitness classes to Silver Sneakers members as no charge. (imagine fitness classes with Motown! Doo Wop! Jazz! Drum! etc.) Silver Fox is also preparing to bring a variety of culturally relevant fitness options directly to Community Seniors through non-profits, Community Based Organizations, Senior Living sites, and Senior Day programs. With the right support, we are poised to bring: QiGong for Cane or Chair, Kemetic Yoga for Seniors, African and Caribbean…

Providing fitness services to Seniors is vital. The human body “needs to keep moving to keep moving.” Healthy Seniors are an inspiration and helping Black Seniors increase their health and physicality is an act of Sankofa, or “going back to correct what has not been done”, for those of us who help make this happen. Creating Silver Fox Elite Fitness is the most important work I have done in my many, many years as a working adult. Silver Fox is committed to making the Golden Years the best years and will continue to tear down the challenges of Ageism and…

Community Partners of South Florida invited me to participate in an interview about the Digital Gap Initiative. It was awesome. What a perfect way to end this mini grant cycle. I’ve made great partnerships and I’m ready to go. What a wonderful opportunity for my business start-up. Thank you so very much Healthier Palm Beach and Community Partners of South Florida.

Silver Fox Elite Fitness is committed to carving Black and Caribbean Seniors a culturally relevant space in the fitness industry. The voices of Seniors is key to this goal. On February 13th Silver Fox hosted the inaugural Virtual Black Senior Fitness Fair providing a platform for Senior voices on issues of health and wellness. The event featured Ernestine Shepard, the legendary 84 year old body builder and fitness professional. Black Senior Fitness Fair segments can be viewed on the Silver Fox Elite Fitness Facebook Channel https://bit.ly/silverfoxelitefitness

This 12 week mini grant opened my mind and heart to all 7 impact areas which in turn has truly assisted me in being a better me all around. I’m looking forward to part 2!

This was about a most exhilarating class with incredible students. As an observer, I loved the interaction that the instructor personally had with the students, as well as with the coaches Daniel and Phil and the excellent workout to begin the class with. After watching all of you, I am going to implement such workout at home for myself. I loved the idea of a student practicing with a racket and a balloon. Tossing the ball against the wall for eye/hand coordination and walking the dog (ball) around the room and chair. I just cannot say enough about the satisfaction…

Individuals aging out of the foster care system got to engage in art and music therapy activities. It was amazing to bring these young people together in a creative way to learn coping skills and express and process their experience.

After receiving the mini grant for a small business start-up, we were able to get all of the required licenses, as well as do a lot of marketing pieces: getting the logo created, doing business cards, flyers, etc. And we were able to present our first contract proposal and we are currently awaiting the final results for doing property management for a small building inside of an HOA community.

My process is going better now that we have launched the art call. Since February, we have had over 12 organizations sign up to be involved, and over 25 artists have submitted to the art call.

With the funds that I was able to receive from the mini grant, I purchased some resistance bands to use with my online Zoom class because of the whole pandemic restrictions at the time. The bands that I had left over, I was actually able to use those and give them to the ladies that were present in a fitness class that I was able to co-teach at a dance studio that’s located in Riviera Beach. I started attending there a couple of months ago, just to network with other women, to put myself more out there, let people know…

We have completed three courses so far for our future leaders primarily for high schoolers in PBC. So far the theme has been on leadership development in which the courses focused on discovering your purpose, goal setting through vision boards, and tonight on public speaking. Every class has a keynote speaker who is a subject matter expert and each one so far as imparted seeds of knowledge, discovery and engagement. In many of the surveys so far, the youth have expressed that they never really thought about their purpose or that they didn’t know that every person on this planet…

There have been three workshops that have occurred since the first sensemaker update I believe. There wasn’t the turnout of youth that I was hoping for and it has been very hard to get to youth to come to the events. At the beginning of the grant I had another co-worker helping with the grant. They are no longer with the company so that has been an added difficulty as they are not longer they to help with coordinating the events. The poetry event was awesome. It was amazing to work on the community poems. I loved how they all…

At last my mini grant has traction!Self Compassion Matters has LIFT OFF!Dovecot Farm has two retreats scheduled for next week….St Mary’s Medical Team on Wednesday 24th March.A group of therapists and Mental health practitioners in the recovery world on Saturday 27th March…One fascinating trend is emerging in the DISC evaluation response…

In my mini grant experience it has beyond awesome! My first experience was involving the youth! I was to teach the kids about photography! We went out into the Glades and we share and compare personal feelings to the photos that were taken! We discussed how a picture has so many different meanings it was all about how you were able to look at it. I was able to give them a real hands on experience before COVID! My current mini grant has to do with getting back to basics! We are actually in process of building a garden retreat!…

I recently taught a Drum Circle Class at Vita Nova. Everyone learned the basic skills so quickly, leading to a very fluid session. I enjoyed getting to know everyone’s stories and how music played a role in their lives. My favorite moment was when each person shared a song that meant a lot to them; they then tried to duplicate the beat on their drums with everyone else following. I would definitely be open to working with Vita Nova in the future, they are an amazing group of people doing impactful work in our community.

This new logo better represent Silver Fox Elite Fitness. It’s beautiful.

Sister to Sister Palm Beach State College – In March we had two events. One was Nutrition. My name is Sherry Fletcher and I am the coordinator of the program but I am also a registered dietitian and we reviewed some information about the credentials of a dietitian/nutritionist and some basic nutrition information with Mentors and Mentees. It was interesting because one of the Mentors is our Director of our RN to BSN program. It was nice to see that she was backing up the information I was trying to get across to the audience and her knowledge about nutrition.…

Working on Center for Child Counseling’s training, Healing the Healers: Creating Happy Healthy Healers and a Happy Healthy Workforce, during this global pandemic has been an interesting and eye-opening endeavor. In our lifetime, there has never been a more challenging time in health and mental health care in terms of the major stressors professionals and clients/patients alike are experiencing at the same time. Working as a helper/healer has always been a challenging and stressful career choice, although for those who survive and thrive in such careers long-term, we also find tremendous reward, satisfaction, and joy from our work. However, with…

This mini grant was liberating and allowed me to make an impact in a creative way. I had a vision of empowering youth all over the County by shifting mindsets. This vision is not just about planting seeds of purpose, leadership, financial know how, and the like–it is about uprooting generational seeds of poverty and lack. This Future Leaders course is designed to deposit seeds of abundance and to tap into a curiosity about themselves and the world, which may not have existed before. I have had the freedom to invite keynote speakers who are passionate about a topical area…

The Healthier Jupiter Mini-Grant served as a catalyst for our organization to bring the benefits of boxing – exercise, discipline, and fun – to young students throughout the Jupiter area. The boxing program brought together students from all walks of life. The best part was seeing students laugh and learn lessons that they will be able to take with them for the rest of their lives. I believe I speak for other volunteers and coaches when I say it is incredibly rewarding to see a student experience a light bulb moment when they see how they can apply lessons learned…

Vida Smith sharing her story of survival and struggle from domestic violence and being a homeless mother to a successful PhD candidate truly inspired me — as I listened to her story as part of Family Promise SPBC’s Sharing Survival Stories Saturday. My role at Family Promise is to interview the storyteller and prep them for going live or being recorded. Over the course of two days/six hours, I was enthralled with Vida’s story of leaving her homeland of Ghana and moving to the United States after getting married to a seemingly nice American man. Once here, she suffered terrible…

South Grade Elementary is a Title I school, where 99% of our students are economically disadvantaged and 97% of our population are minority students, most of which are recent immigrants to the US. We recently became an AVID school, which focuses on college and career readiness from a young age. South Grade Elementary School was the recipient of a mini-grant from Healthier Lake Worth; the grant was in support our 4th and 5th grade Avid students obtaining a shirt that promote college readiness. On February 25th we had a grand revealing of the shirt, that was designed in-house. It was…

I experience It’s Start With Me Program for 16 weeks and would I learn about the program where ever you are in life you can choose to change your mindset simply by allow yourself to open up to opportunity and improved who you are as person as well and connecting as well network with like mind people this can be challenging and rewarding at the same time when you put your mind to what you are trying to reach for you will be surprise the outcome.