Blogs

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. This can be a difficult topic to learn about, but it’s important to understand the cultural landscape youth are navigating and how we can help guide them in healthy decision making and self-advocacy. What is considered “dating violence”? Dating violence is more than just physical violence; it can […]

Trigger warning: mentions of domestic, sexual, and dating violence, bullying, suicide, and mental health struggles. The month of October is dedicated to bringing awareness to several important issues YWRC participants and youth in our community face: domestic violence, bullying, and mental health. For this spotlight, we are sharing how our work responds to several challenges […]

Empowering clients to self-advocate is a key part of being a YWRC doula. Working on birth plans, providing information about their rights during birth, and talking through options with clients are ways we help them prepare for conversations with healthcare providers. As part of Black Maternal Health Week, our doulas wanted to share a few […]

We are excited to share with you two new tools we’ve developed in the past year to better serve our girls and young women: the Youth Experiences Survey (YES) and the YWRC Resiliency Survey. We are proud to be a leading agency in youth-specific trauma and resiliency research and look forward to sharing these tools […]

A letter from Executive Director Kristin Griffith: I continue to be amazed by the sheer passion and commitment our community has for the  girls and young women of the YWRC. Our clients never fail to move and humble me with their desire to succeed and ability to  thrive in situations where many of us would falter. As […]

We are pleased to spotlight Bank of America this month for their generous support of the YWRC through the 2022 Neighborhood Champion award. We are honored to receive this award and to be recognized for our work to remove economic barriers and advance economic opportunity for girls and young women in the Greater Des Moines […]

This month we are pleased to celebrate longtime supporter, Shannon Bielski! Shannon has been a consistent presence with the YWRC and we know we can absolutely count on her to see each project through. “My first involvement with YWRC was 15 years ago, when I attended my first Polk County Women Attorneys Basket Auction to benefit […]

This month we are celebrating the three interns who joined our team this summer (2022): Carla, Mary Carmen, and Tania! These three helped with a wide variety of Empowerment and Young Moms projects while earning educational credit and experience. Mary Carmen supported all of the Young Moms groups at the YWRC (Childbirth Education, Postpartum, and […]

This month we are excited to celebrate one of our most active, dedicated, and long-term volunteers, Karen Henderson. Karen has done it all throughout the past 11 years. She served as a member of our Board of Directors, volunteered as part of our gala committee, provided cookie decorating supplies for participant holiday parties, hosted a […]

This month’s spotlight feature has played an active role with the YWRC for the last eight (!) years! We are thrilled to show our appreciation for Amanda Young through this Board Spotlight. Amanda worked with our staff and the interim executive director in 2014 and 2015 on team building and role clarity training and exercises, […]