HSHS St. Clare Memorial Hospital is pleased to announce the Leon H. and Clymene M. Bond Foundation, Inc., has awarded a $40,000 grant to support Nurse’s Nook – a program that provides aid to children and families in need in all five school districts in Oconto County: Gillett, Suring, Oconto Falls, Oconto and Lena.
Nurse’s Nook provides students and their families with basic needs items including non-perishable food, personal hygiene products, clothing, medical supplies/devices and vouchers for transportation to medical appointments. Items are kept stocked within each of the school districts throughout the year and provided to students free-of-charge on an as-needed basis. Nurse’s Nook also offers an Adopt-A-Family Christmas program to provide families with winter necessities including boots, jackets, hats and gloves. It also offers a Weekend Food program which provides students a bag of nutritious food that contains enough items to allow them to make a full meal at home each week.
“We are immensely grateful to the Bond Foundation for their generous support of Nurse’s Nook and the children and families we serve here in Oconto County,” said Nuala Nowicki, founder of the Nurse’s Nook program. “These funds will allow us to maintain programming, purchase additional supplies and serve more families in Oconto County.”
This is the second Bond Foundation grant to be awarded to Nurse’s Nook. In 2018, it awarded Nurse’s Nook $30,000 which was used to help expand the program to the Oconto and Lena school districts.
Nurse’s Nook informally began in 2014 when Nuala, who is also a Prevea Health school nurse for the Gillett School District, recognized that poverty in the community was negatively impacting students’ abilities to learn and succeed in school. Today, Nurse’s Nook is an official program of HSHS St. Clare Memorial Hospital, operated in collaboration with Nuala, Prevea Health and countless volunteers and donors who dedicate time and effort to collecting, organizing and distributing supplies.
The Nurse’s Nook program relies solely on support and donations from the community to operate. Anyone who would like to learn more information or donate to Nurse’s Nook should contact Debbie Hockers at (920) 433-8653 or email ewfriends@hshs.org.