HERS Women's Support Group for the Fox Valley

In the Fox Valley Region, there are many single-mothers trying to raise their children by themselves, or there are women in low-income housing going through struggles for work or social situations. Regardless of reasoning, these women are in need of support from their peers, or a place to vent out their frustrations and struggles in order to find a better solution to their current predicaments. This is where our HERS Group for women of the Fox Valley region comes in.

HERS (Healing, Empowerment, and Relief for Sisters) Group began in 2022, originally under the name of Tea Talk. It's main purpose was to offer women a space for them to come sit and talk about the struggles they are facing in their lives...be it social situations, problems at work, or general feelings of inadequacy or stress at home that they need to vent about. Over the course of two years that we've been hosting this group, our goal has largely remained intact, but changes were made to better accomodate the needs of the minority women in the Fox Valley region.

For starters, we've observed that most of our attendees are Congolese refugees, many of whom have not completed their immigration process to America yet and thus struggle with English for communication. We have partnered with a local volunteer who is able to speak Congolese fluently, and she has served as our interpretor for many HERS Group meetings. We have also found that many of our attendees are new mothers, and thus were in need of diapers and hygenic supplies for children that we are sure to pack up and provide for our guests. The fact the many of our attendees are new mothers also led to a discovery that many could not afford or find caretakers to look after their children during our initially scheduled times, so we decided to offer that support via a Youth Creative Workshop that we run at the same time as HERS. The last major thing we've noticed during our various HERS Group meetings is that while we initially wanted our guests to freely discussed their concerns, many were unstandebly nervous about speaking up. We realized that we needed to have focused discussions to guide guests towards conversations they may need to have. So far, we've hosted HERS meetings to discuss parenting, mental health in the worksplace, and finding affordable healthcare services.

Over the course of HERS, we have interacted with over 20 different individuals and their families, many of whom remain in close contact for the next HERS meetings. We have distributed diapers for over 35 children among the 20 different families, and our social media continues to reach more people about HERS and the benefits they offer. We look forward to continuing HERS for many more years to come.

Links:

• our website