The Association of American University Women’s Missoula chapter recently granted nearly $10,000 over two years to the YWCA’s girls’ leadership program as part of their national competition of community development grants.

The money will help GUTS! develop its 8th grade leadership program in partnership with the Flagship program to help girls succeed as they move from middle school to high school, according to Program Director Jen Euell. This is the second year AAUW Missoula has funded the program.

“This money is very important because adolescence in general and 8th and 9th grade in particular are very vulnerable times for young women because they are going through physical, mental and emotional changes,” Euell said.

Part of the reason AAUW Missoula supports GUTS! is because it was started by graduates of the University of Montana Women’s and Gender Studies program.

Starting in July, Missoula-based country music artist Shane Clouse will begin selling his albums at YWCA Missoula’s Secret Seconds thrift stores. Despite having shared the stage with Don Williams, Phil Vasser, Huey Lewis, Sawyer Brown, Dierks Bentley and most recently John Anderson, Clouse remains devoted to his native community and the many worthy causes in it, including the YWCA.

"The YWCA not only promotes women, but also strong families and good fathers,” Clouse said. “I support the YWCA because of the holistic ways it creates a positive environment in Missoula.”

The albums will be on sale at all three stores, located at 1136 W. Broadway, 920 Kensington, and 1221 Helen Ave., for $10 each. A portion of the money from each disc sold will go toward the YWCA’s programs to end domestic and sexual violence and house homeless families in Missoula.

Clouse credits his wife, Kelly Clouse, the director of Spirit at Play Early Childhood Learning Center, with the idea of selling his CDs at Secret Seconds.

“She and I are frequent shoppers at Secret Seconds,” he said.

MISSOULA – Local remodelers are lending a helping hand to women in need by retrofitting windows in two YWCA-owned apartments. The Missoula Building Industry Remodelers Council’s first annual Community Project takes place on Saturday, June 12, beginning at 8 a.m.

The Remodelers Council is committed to building strong and vibrant communities, said Priscilla Jerrell, the group’s chairwoman.

“The YWCA is such a noble organization, we wanted to do something that will help them fulfill their creed to empower women and end racism,” said Jerrell, who works as a designer at Pierce Flooring & Design. “We decided our first Community Project would be through a nonprofit, charitable organization that needed our expertise.”

Throughout the project, remodelers will install new windows and fittings that meet new energy standards, increasing the efficiency of the apartment units, which are used by homeless single moms.

American Indians have had government- supplied health care since tribes ceded ancestral land to the United States in exchange for certain promised benefits. Why, then, are American Indians as a population sicker than other Americans and dying at much younger ages?

The American government's delivery on the promise of health care has had a rocky history. Responsibility over the centuries has shifted from the War Department to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Indian Health Service. Tribes themselves have shared oversight for health care since the Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. Yet still the disparity in the health status of Americans remains.

Indians are 500 percent more likely to contract tuberculosis, 519 percent more likely to become alcoholics, and 195 percent more likely to develop diabetes. They also have a 149 percent higher rate of accidental injury, and are 72 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

The reasons are both social and economic. Poverty, access to care, social problems and a lack of funding to meet more than basic needs have compounded the health issues of this nation’s first peoples.