Focus Area: Youth Development

Grant Amount: $12,500

Based in St. Paul, serves St. Paul and Maplewood. ENS supports women and their families who are recovering from homelessness and experiencing the challenges of mental and/or chemical disabilities at two housing facilities: Emma Norton Residences in downtown St. Paul, and Emma’s Place in Maplewood. Most of the clients at Emma’s Place are women with large families in which at least one member has some kind of disability. In 2019, ENS began to pilot after-school programming with a focus on social-emotional learning (SEL) for children ages 5-12 living at its sites.

Grant supports Emma’s Place’s trauma informed youth program and its new art therapy program, which has gotten a good response from participants. With the stress and anxiety of the pandemic and unrest, art therapy has been a very valuable tool for children and their families. Partnering with a team from Art to Change the World, Emma’s Place is building a “Recovery from Trauma” room, which will be a sensory room available for youth and their families when they need a safe space to process difficulty in their lives or to meet with staff or visiting mental health professionals in a private space.