Our 2021 Annual Report was published last month. Read about the work we've done in the areas of Basic Needs, Early Childhood, Youth Development, Volunteer Engagement, and DEI.

The ALICE in Focus: Children research brief for Wisconsin was launched this month. It reveals that while 12% of all children were in poverty in 2019, another 26% were ALICE. Combined, 38% of children in our state were living in financial hardship just before the pandemic hit.

Watch the video to hear Stephanie Hoopes, Ph.D., United For ALICE National Director, explain what other insights you can gain from the new brief and online dashboards. Access the dashboards here.

United Way's MyFreeTaxes.com offers a 100% FREE way to file your state and federal taxes.

The average refund for Manitowoc County residents in 2021 was $2,199. Plus, it's super easy!

File your taxes by using MyFreeTaxes.com by April 18.

The Early Childhood Care & Education Consortium of Manitowoc County introduced an innovative Early Childhood Care Benefit to Manitowoc County employers on April 4 via Zoom.

This new and forward-thinking benefit is a community workforce development initiative for Manitowoc County employers that will:

As an early adopter of the program Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry joined Ashley Bender, Executive Director of United Way Manitowoc County and other members of the Consortium to introduce the benefit and how it works.

April is National Volunteer Month with April 17-23 designated as National Volunteer Week.

United Way Manitowoc County wants to express a sincere and heartfelt Thank You to all of our volunteers - board members, committee members, volunteer workers, ALL OF YOU - for your hard work and dedicated commitment. We couldn't do it without you!

How to get involved in your community this month:

On April 13, volunteers from Cleveland State Bank came to our office for a United Way Company Day of Caring event. They assembled 400 financial literacy kits for us!

The kit centers around the book Just Saving My Money by Mercer Mayer. In the book, the young character wants a skateboard, and his parents suggest chores he can perform in order to pay for the skateboard.

The Activity Guide included in the kit guides the parent, guardian or teacher in asking questions of the child after reading the book to deepen their understanding of income and savings. The child can then choose a savings goal of their own and draw job opportunities from a stack of cards in order to meet that goal. They will create math sentences during this process. A fun and educational kit!

Thank you, Cleveland State Bank, for supporting our Early Childhood initiative!

Special thanks to the West Foundation for funding the kits.