Women's Community School
Our first community program, launched in 2008, FISH Hospitality Pantries’ Women’s Community School is a leadership development program focused on identifying and nurturing the talents, abilities, and potential of women from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds. The Community School discovers and calls forth talents and abilities from women—African American, Latina, and Anglo, from churches and neighborhoods, both low-income and marginalized and middle-class; provides training for them in how to act together to improve situations in their neighborhoods and community; and creates community among participants across denominational, class, ethnic and economic lines by building relationships around their common values and interests.
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Participants emerge from Community School equipped with the self-confidence, knowledge, and skills needed to advocate for themselves and for their neighborhoods and communities. The program’s collaborative approach also benefits the wider Knoxville community by strengthening interpersonal connections across diverse denominational, economic, and ethnic lines. •