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Wyoming Family Home Ownership Project Celebrates Success!
Cheyenne, WY
The Wyoming Family Home Ownership Project, one of the Wyoming Women’s Foundation’s grantee recipients for 2008, is using the funds to hire an executive intern. Riana Perez, a graduate from the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will work with WYFHOP from March through November. Perez will work on several capacity building projects, including creating monthly newsletters for the WYFOP website and working on a major analysis of the feasibility of using a Community Land Trust to address the issue of housing in impacted Wyoming communities.
WYFHOP is a non-profit organization dedicated to home ownership for working Wyoming families with children. WYFHOP’s mission is to support and prepare lower income one and two parent families who have children with the necessary resources to successfully achieve home ownership. WYFHOP believes in a social science model developed by Payne, Devol and Miller who have documented that families are lifted from poverty through education and building supportive relationships with other mentor families in the community. This program requires each participating family to make a two year commitment to home ownership preparation. During these two years, the family is required to enroll in a financial literacy program, the Casey Family Program, as well as save $100 a month. Additional support for families is provided by faith communities, business partners, the Wyoming Women’s Business Center and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle, making it truly a full community effort. Five of the first nine families are employed women seeking self-sufficiency for themselves and their children.
The Cheyenne based organization has plans to expand into three more communities across Wyoming in 2009. Perez will be key in this expansion and will gain an in-depth experience on women and families living in poverty in Wyoming. Perez will work with WYFHOP’s founder, Terry Williams, and key members of the advisory board to develop a prioritized strategy to present to the program to the three most interested communities.
Recently, WYFHOP celebrated its first major success. “On March 3, in Cheyenne, we presented a WYFHOP check to our first home owner family,” Terry Williams said.
The Wyoming Women’s Foundation is proud to support WYFHOP. WYFHOP’s developed and well rounded approach to home ownership is an excellent example of tapping into community resources and re-investing them to help that community prosper. The Wyoming Women’s Foundation agrees with the Wyoming Home Ownership Program belief that through home ownership, the family develops a sense of equity that can be leveraged for the families’ future. The WyWF also agrees that by giving women an opportunity to have a hand-up and to choose where they live and have their children go to school; WYFOP is making an investment in our state’s future that will provide a valuable return.
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