Black Women of Essence, Inc.

The Central Florida Chapter of Black Women Of Essence, Inc. (BWOE) is also the headquarters for BWOE. Our chapter is comprised of members throughout the Central Florida area. (Altamonte Springs, Apopka, Deland, Eustis, Orlando and Sanford).

We are actively involved in our Community

BWOE - F.R.E.E., Inc . is a Mentor program that the Central Florida Chapter founded on May 1, 2005 F.R.E.E stands for Focusing on Respect, Excellence, and Empowerment. This program is for middle school girls in grades 5th to 9th. The program promotes guidance, self-esteem and self-awareness building activities, tutoring, and other services geared towards adolescents. For more information you can visit www.freeinc.org.

Our chapter is very active in the community as over the past 6 years we have participated in the Making Strides against Breast Cancer Walk, American Heart Walk and March of Dimes Walk.

We have made numerous contributions to the community by donating clothes and toiletries to the Harbor House “Orange County Center against Domestic Violence”; adopted-a-family during the holiday season from, A Christian's Help. We participated in a Domestic Violence candle light vigil sponsored by the Safe House of Seminole in Sanford , Florida. We have also assisted with preparing and serving food at the Salvation Army in Orlando , Florida; adopted a family of 4, in which we provided a fully cooked, Thanksgiving Dinner to on Thanksgiving Day;

We have continually partnered with the Orlando Union Rescue Mission and provided the following:

Toys from their special "wish lists"
Donated toys, games/board games, dolls, educational books and educational computer games, hats, scarves, gloves and warm weather clothing.
Grab bags for the children at the Mission to participate in or have their own Valentine's day party. Valentine's Day 2005 we
Filled 10 Hope Tote bags with hygiene items such as soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, socks, and diapers to name a few for Easter.

Through our commitment to continued education, we have:

Provided over 80 valentine's day bags to the children of the Pine Hills HeadStart Program.
Sponsored 3 head start classrooms at Pine Hills HeadStart Program and provided them with over 100 books for a classroom library
Provided over 60 children at Pine Hills HeadStart with wrapped shoeboxes full of toys during the holiday season
Sponsored 17 children from Hamilton Headstart Classroom C and provided them with wrapped shoeboxes full of toys.
We've held several School Supply Drives in which we've provided Single Parent families from Hamilton Elementary School with School Supplies throughout the entire school year. We were able to provide 25 families and a total of 40 children with pencils, pens, notebooks, note book paper, erasers, glue sticks, school boxes, crayons, ring binders and rulers in one school year.

We have also hosted a Community Health Festival, with the assistance of the health department and many other community based organizations, that provided various booths with health information and STD, HIV testing, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol services for residents of the Orlando Union Rescue Mission; an organization that has not had a health fair in over 27 years.

We have also given back to our community and assisted 2 high school students in the Central Florida area with pursuing continued education. In 2004, we selected 2 recipients and awarded them both with one College Application fee to the school of their choice (New York University and John Hopkins University ).