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Westhab President Interviewed by News 12 - segment on Homelessness "Out In The Cold" click here to view the video.

 

STYLING FOR A CAUSE

"Good Clothes Opens All Doors", transformed residents from the Coachman Family Center into front-page cover girls. On any other day the Youth Services room at the Coachman would be used to run after school programs, but on December 5th, 2007, it resembled a professional photo shoot. Excitement filled the room as the women cheerfully cooperated with fashion stylists for their one-on-one consultations. Many accolades go to Professor Phyllis Fein and the Fashion Merchandising students of Westchester Community College who collaborated with Westhab to make this possible. The expertise that was rendered to the residents by these fashionistas was astonishing. Not only did the clients walk away with clothing and a fabulous new look, but a new outlook on their self-image. The residents had the choice of receiving career, casual, or social attire along with their matching accessories. Once the residents or should we say "models" received their makeovers they strutted down the mini runway to showoff their trendy new look. This event was living proof that fashion has no borders.

WELCOME TO THE B.L.U.E. ROOM

Thanks to the hard work of Sheila Smith of the Ethical Cultural Society (ECS) of Westchester, Margery Arsham, Westhab’s Director of Educational Programs, a $9,500 grant from the Verizon Foundation, and a huge donation of books from Scholastic, Inc., the Coachman Family Center (CFC) now boasts a library for homeless families with babies to eight-year-olds.

We call it The B.L.U.E. Room --- “B.L.U.E.” for Books Launch Unlimited Experiences.

It opened on January 18th, with freshly painted blue walls (what else?), a colorful carpet, cushioned couches, beanbag chairs, a puppet theater, and many, many, books--from board books for babies and picture books for toddlers to books for early to advanced readers. Among the titles are many treasured old favorites in English and Spanish.

Families use the room for quiet reading time together, and check out books to take to their rooms in book bags we supply. CFC childcare staff bring pre-schoolers in for reading activities. And we’ve scheduled ECS members, White Plains Library staff, and other community volunteers to help run the room and conduct read-alouds. This month, members of the Westchester County chapter of the Links are starting a two-evening-a-week pajama storytime, at which they will read stories to parents and their pajama-clad children, and distribute toothbrushes and books for the families to keep.

Sheila Smith, along with being a volunteer extraordinaire, is also Director of Best Practices for Quality Early Childhood Programs at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, Child and Family Policy Center. She designed the B.L.U.E. Room’s program with Westhab’s Margery Arsham.

Smith says, “The B.L.U.E. Room is a bright, comfortable place where parents and children can spend quality time together, and where parents can help children discover the joys of reading. Members of ECS of Westchester appreciate the chance to continue our partnership with Westhab, and look forward to helping maintain the B.L.U.E. Room and plan special events such as book parties and literacy workshops.”

Most of the people instrumental in creating the B.L.U.E. Room are pictured here: Back row l.to r.: Oliver Swift and Bart Worden of ECS; Judy Zendell, Rich Nightingale, and Margery Arsham of Westhab; Shelia Smith of ECS; and Tom Clark and John Butler from Verizon. In the front row are opening-day users of the room with Brendajoy Griffin, who leads Childcare at the CFC.

Arsham says the literacy workshops will educate parents about the importance of reading to young children for critical early brain development, vocabulary acquisition, pre-reading skills, and lifelong enhanced cognition. “Homeless and low-income children are often severely language deprived, and start school way behind their more affluent peers,” she says. “And from there they just keep falling further and further behind. The B.L.U.E. Room aims to stop that trend for our Coachman families. Parents need to know they are their children’s most important first teachers. ”