After a year of new challenges and difficult situations, we’re happy to recap and celebrate some OEA Choice Trust accomplishments in 2020!
New School Employee Wellness (SEW) Grantees
OEA Choice Trust is proud to announce the latest recipients of a School Employee Wellness (SEW) Grant – Clackamas ESD, Days Creek Charter School, Eugene School District, Mt. Angel School District and Northwest Regional ESD!
There are currently 25 K-12 districts, ESDs and community colleges in Oregon that have a School Employee Wellness Grant. SEW Grants are awarded for up to $100,000 over a period of 5 years.
Spring 2021 SEW Grant applications are due no later than May 6, 2021.
Days Creek Charter School installed an outdoor exercise area as part of their first grant year.
Grantees receive special grantee benefits with their grant award:
- Walker Tracker: This program, which is also an app, allows school employees to participate in walking challenges. Each challenge has a themed digital map with checkpoints. Participants can track their progress along the challenge route and even convert other physical activity, such as swimming or gardening, into steps.
- Journey to Wellness: Journey to Wellness is an annual grantee meeting focused on professional development and grantee networking. Past professional development sessions focused on mental health and well-being, cultivating personal resilience and school employee trauma and healing.
- Technical assistance: Each grantee has a liaison, an OEA Choice Trust staff member dedicated to supporting them on their wellness journey. Technical assistance is offered in the spirit of support and growth. Liaisons can help grantees with program planning, designing staff surveys, interpreting survey data, finding free and low-cost resources and grant related requirements like annual reports.
- Zoom discussions: To date, OEA Choice Trust has hosted three different Zoom sessions for grantees. These sessions are designed to create time and space for grantees to connect, share and learn from one another.
2021 Oregon School Employee Wellness Conference
The 2021 Oregon School Employee Wellness Conference will be held virtually this year! OEA Choice Trust staff and an Advisory Committee of educators and sponsors began planning the event last winter. The conference theme is Rejuvenate – Come Join Us!
The conference will be held on April 8 from 3:00-6:00 pm and April 9 from 2:00-5:00 pm. School employees are encouraged to sign up even if they can only attend certain sessions!
To receive conference information and updates, please sign up for the preregistration list. This list will get all future emails about the event, including a link to the registration page when it goes live.
Mini Grant Program Milestones
The Trust’s Mini Grant program began its third year in fall of 2020. The latest Mini Grant recipients are Arlington School District, Baker School District, Central School District, Dallas School District, Elgin School District, Lake County School District, Linn Benton Lincoln ESD, Rainier School District, North Powder School District and Village School!
Mini Grants are specifically awarded to support established School Employee Wellness programs. In the first two years, 14 organizations were awarded over $79,000 to sustain their employee wellness programs.
Mini Grant funds have been used to hold wellness kickoff eventss, host wellness challenges and offer wellness workshops. Some recipients have used Mini Grants to continue partnering with local organizations to provide ski passes, yoga classes, massages and personal fitness training. Others have prioritized development and maintenance of staff wellness on site: staff workout areas, staff relaxation areas and offering staff healthy salad lunches in partnership with the Nutrition Services Department. Mini Grant funds can also be used to provide wellness coordinator stipends and purchase incentives.
Fall Webinars
OEA Choice Trust hosted three guest speakers in the fall of 2019! These webinars, along with others hosted by the Trust, are all available to view on our Webinars page.
- Jess Lawrence, Director of Cairn Guidance, led a session about how school employee wellness is central to the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) framework.
- Steve Brown, also known as The Bald Futurist, presented about how technology will change our future.
- Lisa Collins, owner of Education Through Engagement, provided in-the-moment tools for self-regulation and tips for building personal resilience.
To make sure you receive updates from the Trust, sign up using the small pop-up window on our home page.
