The fourth quarter River City Givers meeting was held on Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at the Wyndham Swim & Racquet Club. We held a ½ hour social time prior to the meeting for members to meet and get to know each other. Refreshments and snacks were provided during this time.

There were 18 people in attendance.
Three members submitted charities for consideration to the membership at the meeting.

Shelly Desbois shared about Northstar Academy which is a nonprofit private school licensed by VDOE that promotes education and career opportunities for individuals with disabilities who have academic, physical or social challenges. Northstar serves students with a wide range of abilities, including 12 of the 13 disabilities identified by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).
To ensure each student is challenged within their ability, Northstar practices differentiated instruction, project-based learning, and hands-on worksite experience allowing students to not only learn skills but apply them to their everyday lives.

Northstar offers two premier programs — Northstar Academy and Northstar Career Center The students each face unique challenges but with specialized instruction, small classroom sizes, and highly qualified faculty, Northstar helps students of all abilities achieve their greatest potential.
Northstar Academy is the academic program that serves students in grades K-12. The Academy provides students with a full school experience including:  clubs, sports and yearly traditions.
Northstar Academy has developed a proprietary social skills curriculum. Each day in Advisory Class, along with reinforcement throughout the day, students grow their executive function skills, self-regulation abilities and metacognitive (thought awareness, planning, and goal setting) abilities. They learn how to interact with others in school, at work, in community
Northstar Career Center serves juniors, seniors and young adults from the Academy and the Greater Richmond area and prepares them for competitive employment through hands-on learning.
Northstar Career Center serves young adults with disabilities ages 16 – 24 to help them gain work readiness skills as they transition into the workforce. They empower students through a comprehensive array of vocational programs designed to foster independence, confidence, and career readiness. Students not only come from within Northstar Academy, but also public and private schools in the Greater Richmond area. Additionally, Northstar Career Center enhances homeschool education programs.
Northstar Academy has 122 students while the Career Center has 79 students. There are 48 students in both programs.
The latest project was building an athletic complex and was completed earlier this year.
They would use donations for need based scholarships.
https://northstarva.org/
 
Mary Gill told the group about SHOOD which was founded in 2017 and the founder still runs the program. Their mission is to provide a pair of new or like new, well-fitting running shoes to economically disadvantaged communities and deliver them with dignity.
Since 2017, they’ve given out over 30,000 pairs of shoes. It is 100% volunteer run.
Every volunteer is trained to fit shoes. They go to locations and set up like a shoe store. They also give out socks and a nylon gym bag.
Shood distributes shoes two different ways--
Shooding Star Shares to support local high school and middle school running programs. The Shooding Stars Program supports youth and teen running programs at various Title 1 schools in and around Richmond.
Shood provides running shoes and track spikes to student-athletes participating in Cross Country and Indoor/Outdoor Track at all five Richmond Public High Schools and Petersburg High School. Each student-athlete is professionally fitted and receives Bomba Socks and race day items.
Shood also partners with Girls on the Run Greater Richmond and Kids on the Move to provide running shoes to elementary and middle school runners needing shoes who attend Title 1 schools.
Shood Shares (Shoe Giveaways) at local soup kitchens, food pantries and recovery programs. Shood takes shoes to mini pop-up shoe giveaways throughout the city where guests are professionally sized and fitted. Guests also receive Bombas socks and other foot related items.
Donations could help purchase running shoes or specific size track spikes.
https://www.shood.org/
 
Vicki Yeroian shared about WRIR – 97.3 FM which is a local independent radio station that has been a part of the Richmond community for 20 years. They are a truly local independent radio station with 30 different talk programs and 80 music shows. Their shows feature folks in our community and talks about events and other things happening in the area. They share different resources for different populations.
They are currently moving to a new building near 17th Street Farmers Market to be more ADA accessible as they have individuals with all different abilities who volunteer. This would also put them closer to many community events.
WRIR does a lot of educational programs in the community and have programs and podcasts to teach students.
This is a fully volunteer program. They have new leadership and donations could help the new leadership transition by providing training and resources on how to run the radio station and helping to get someone to do the educational programs for the kids.
They also offer free advertising for nonprofits in our community to get the word out. Vicki will even discuss with them about possibly doing an advertisement for us prior to our quarterly meetings.
https://www.wrir.org/

Upon completion of the above presentations, ballots were collected from the members present and WRIR was announced as the winner of Fourth Quarter funds!
 
The presenter from Project LifeSaver was not able to attend, but Tiffany shared that he had emailed and said that he had already begun the process of ordering 4 new receivers with the funds which will be deployed to help update some of the older equipment.