Women Helping WomenA Story of SuccessLake Worth West Resident Planning Group, Inc. has been able to provide educational workshops to the community for many years. We have been blessed to have great community partners who facilitate capacity building workshops about a variety of topics to educate the Lake Worth West families and raise awareness regarding physical and mental health, nutrition, safety, and child development, among others.In 2016, the Lake Worth West staff realized the need to offer a safe space for the Lake Worth West women to share with other women their own experiences, challenges, and successes as mothers and wives in the community. The women wanted to create a net of support. That is how the Women’s Club began. Before the pandemic, we were able to do sessions in our building, go out to parks for walks and picnics, to museums, botanical gardens, restaurants, and other places. Through this program women have been able to visit places they have never been before, or will never be able to afford, that serve to reduce life’s stressors. Despite the pandemic, 2020 has brought us many blessings, including the Be Well Do Well grant for LWW’s Women’s Club/Women Helping Women behavioral health and wellness initiative. With the funding we were granted, the participants have been able to participate in new weekly wellness and stress reduction activities like Zumba and Yoga classes. The group also added a weekly cooking class named “Let’s Get Cooking”. The facilitator of this amazing class is a professional nutritionist who comes up with healthy and easy recipes to teach to Women Helping Women participants about eating for good emotional and physical health. In a recent session of the Women Helping Women program, some participants expressed their gratitude and appreciation for all the activities offered. Some of their comments were: “The zumba class has helped me and my daughter to relief some stress in these times of craziness.” “The Yoga class is my time to relax after a busy day at work.” “The yoga class has taught different ways to breathe to calm myself down when I am anxious and stressed out.” “I have learned how to cook healthy recipes for me and my family.”“Thank you for that excellent cooking class, my family and I enjoyed this delicious and healthy recipe.”Our most recent accomplishment happened during the November Women Helping Women session when two of the moms took the lead of the class, showed a well-prepared Power Point ant talked to 18 more participants about women’s empowerment and beauty stereotypes. They facilitated a great session, allowed other women to share their experiences and opinions and encouraged everyone to love and appreciate themselves the way they are. They reminded everybody how important and valuable they are and the importance of believing in themselves to be able to reach their goals and dreams. After seeing these women leading that class, we, as organization, felt proud of them and their accomplishments. We confirmed that this program has touched the lives of women for good and that we want to keep women empowering more women to become self-sufficient and great community leaders. With the Be Well grant, we have been able to incentivize women’s participation and motivate their leadership skills through gift cards and kitchen utensils helpful to preparing the recipes learned in the cooking class. Thank you very much to Be Well Do Well for your support!