#123 Raising HOPE with Amy Summers and Tasha Ortloff

Today I am joined by two phenomenal women from Raising HOPE!Amy Summers, Program Director for Raising HOPE. She is responsible for the overall coordination and organization of the Raising Hope administrative and operational components, and programmatic components as well as recruitment. She was the former Director of the Big Brothers Big Sisters satellite program at Amherst College where she interviewed and matched “Bigs” with “Littles”, supervised an onsite program, planned and ran program events, and provided support and trainings for program participants. She is also an experienced facilitator of women’s empowerment workshops, meditation and stress reduction classes, and conscious communication counseling, all of which she culls from to create, facilitate and coordinate programming & workshops for Raising HOPE participants. She has a degree in Women’s Studies with a concentration in Workshop Development and experience as an entrepreneur, as the former owner of Transformations Workshop Center and Gallery in Amherst MA, and currently operating Aquoga ® Aquatic exercise and adapted yoga classes in Ulster County.ANDTasha Ortloff who is the Raising Hope Assistant Program Director who brings administrative, operations, marketing, advocacy, technology, and interpersonal skills to Raising HOPE. As someone who attained her college degree while working, and being the single parent of two children, she knows first-hand the difficulty of achieving educational and career goals in the face of challenges. She is a Board Member for Health Care is a Human Right, and prior to her work at Raising HOPE, she was the Director of Operations and Development at the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of NY.Raising HOPE, is a women's mentoring women program through the United Way of Ulster County whose vision is to inspire a community of women to mobilize their time, talent, and financial resources to help other women achieve their potential. They offer H-O-P-E, Help, Opportunity, Passion and Empowerment to support women on their journey to self-sufficiency. Woman-to-woman mentoring, where a mentor supports, encourages and guides a mentee has an immensely powerful impact on the mentee's ability to achieve her academic and professional goals. In short, having someone believe in you can make all the difference.Raising HOPE serves women 18+ who want to achieve personal, educational, or vocational goals and seek support to reach them. Their Mentees have a broad range of life experiences, but they all have one thing in common: a desire to improve their lives, and those of their families, by making a commitment to their Mentors - and themselves - to work hard to achieve their goals.They welcome all women 30+ who have life experience they'd like to share and desire to help others, to consider becoming a Mentor.Their Mentors play a number of roles including:-Partnering to achieve personal, educational, or vocational goals.-Being a sounding board about choices and priorities.-Providing feedback in communication and life skills.-Motivating when encouragement is needed.Raising HOPE offers regular online classes including Motivational Mondays which you can learn more about via their Facebook Page. They are accepting mentee applications now for a new matching that will take place this Fall, and stay tuned for info on their Celebration of HOPE event taking place this October, 16, 2020!Today’s show was engineered by Nick Panken of Radio Kingston, www.radiokingston.org.We heard music from our fave, Shana Falana, http://www.shanafalana.com/Feel free to email me, say hello: [email protected] me a voicemail with your thoughts or a few words about who has what you want and why! (845) 481-3429** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT :)http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcastITUNES | SPOTIFY | STITCHERITUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-want-what-she-has/id1451648361?mt=2SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/77pmJwS2q9vTywz7Uhiyff?si=G2eYCjLjT3KltgdfA6XXCASTITCHER: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/she-wants/i-want-what-she-has?refid=stpr’Follow:INSTAGRAM * https://www.instagram.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast/FACEBOOK * https://www.facebook.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcastTWITTER * https://twitter.com/wantwhatshehas