Melissa Spooner, Cook County

                                    Tracy Phillabaum, DuPage County  

Committee objectives: Within the last year we worked on exploring ways to expand our membership of the committee, exploring fundraising activities, holding a craft sale, and bringing in highly qualified speakers for our bi-annual conferences.  Unofficially we had approximately 5 people attend a meeting in Bloomington prior to the spring conference, 4 people attend the meeting at the spring conference, and decided not to hold a meeting at the fall conference. At the committee meetings we discussed matters such as what stage of completion the catalog of female offender programming within the state was in, the preparation and execution of the craft sale (spring), designing a brochure for the committee to increase membership as well as get out information at and for workshops, future conference speakers and workshop topics, the focus of the committee, upcoming events in the area of female responsive programs, and the vision for the committee. 

  Goals for the upcoming year include:

1. Continued expansion of membership to the committee
2. Identify significant training needs, topics and locate funding
3. Offer at least 1 workshop training; “Female Responsive Services: Girls in the Juvenile Justice System”.
4. Distribute the “catalog” of gender responsive programming currently offered throughout the state
5. To hold our third annual spring conference craft sale and have it be more successful than the last.
6. Brainstorm other fund raising events/opportunities
7. Create a brochure detailing the creation, mission and vision of our committee to be disseminated at our table during conferences and in the gender specific workshops being held.

Budget requested: $250 for art supplies to offer counties in order for female offenders to create crafts for the sale at the spring conference, as well as printed copies of our catalog and brochures.