Project Report
| Sep 30, 2025
Future Plans for HERS
By Ajer Qureshi | Program Manager
HERS continues to grow and improve with every new meeting we host. Our next one is planned for the next Wednesday and Thursday, with a new approach to encourage more participation and accessbility for our friends and members.
The community that we serve is largely composed of immigrants and refugees from the Congolese and other African countries, and a lot of them arrive with a struggle to understand English or speak it. During our HERS programs of prior weeks and months, we were fortunate enough to have a translater for us to speak for the individuals with no English skills or understanding in general...however we found that attempting to cover both kinds of people in a single day slowed things down, as we needed to share our discussion and have the translator translate what we say back and forth.
Starting from next week, we will be implementing not one, but TWO HERS group sessions going forward. Our first session will be for our English speaking guests and friends, and will act as a normal session. The next day, we will have our session again, this time hosted with our translator in Congolese. The advantage of this is that it gives us an opportunity to target both groups in a more efficient way, allowing us to communicate with the english speaking members fluently during one meeting, and then having the second meeting be with the translator who will allow us to share our same meeting notes with the non-English speakers more effectively.
In addition to changes in the way we present our HERS program, we will also be extending our reach of potential members of HERS, as we collaborate with both Leavens and Community Clothes Closet of the Fox Valleys to sit at their locations and introduce our programs to more people as they come in.
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Jun 9, 2025
Continuing to Provide Family Support for Mothers
By Ajer Qureshi | Program Manager
Through our HERS Women's Support Group, PCI continues to strengthen family support for minority mothers across the Fox Valley, thanks to our continuing lessons with the Strengthening Families Program and our Mental Health programs for youths. With SFP, we are encouraging strengthening family bonds with lessons on how to approach conflicts in the household and ways to encourage unity through fun activities or exercises. Our members are taking these lessons to stride, applying them to their own households, and they are excited to attend every new session.
In addition to our continuing HERS group, we are bringing the SFP and Mental Health programs outside of our office to the homeless communities thanks to a partnership with Pillars. We have visited the family and adult shelters multiple times, bringing family activites and mental health exercises to the homeless community members to help them learn the value of feeling emotions and keeping their confidence high.
We are continuing our support for SFP and HERS. One of our next lesson plans will be presented in collaboration with CAHL to teach about substance abuse and drugs, and what families can do to discourage them in their households.
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Feb 11, 2025
Supporting Mental Health Initiatives Through HERS
By Ajer Qureshi | Program Manager
The primary purpose of HERS group is to provide support and friendships for minority mothers and women undergoing struggles in their personal lives in the Fox Valley Community. However, simply sitting down and casually hanging out is not enough that we can provide, which is why as part of HERS, we have also been introducing our Mental Health Program to minority women and any children that they may have, a program that is fully dedicated to ensuring women and children get the best mental health care that they can possibly recieve.
Through the Mental Health Program, we connect individuals with professional therapists and mental health experts to provide them with therapuetic services paid for by us. This program ensures that individuals get direct access to mental health resources and experts to help individuals going through mental health struggles get the support they need. In addition, our trained staff also provides brief talks during HERS group about mental health exercises and how family members can help spot the various mental health warning signs so that they can help or provide for them the help needed. HERS also simultaneously holds a Mental Health Workshop for children that is held at the same time as HERS group. It provides children with a fun and engaging mental health based activity, from coloring to arts and crafts and storytime, giving them both a venue to help relieve any mental health stress they may have developed as well as to give them something fun to do while their parent(s) are at HERS.
Our work to help alleve mental health struggles among minorities and children in the Fox Valley region is far from over, but we hope that with what we do at HERS, we have a strong foundational start.
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