Health Education and Welfare Incorporated

Providing new and innovative programs and services in the areas of health, education, and social welfare. Our two main areas of focus, at this time, are our Advances in Lymphedema Care conferences, which fund The Compression Garment Fund, and, our Healing Through the Arts program.

We seek to increase awareness of Lymphedema, a potentially life threatening disease for which there is no cure, and which affects nearly 10 million Americans; provide education for Lymphedema survivors, their supporters and the medical community; and, help those in financial need to obtain their medically necessary compression garments. Insurance does not provide adequate coverage; Medicare provides NO coverage, and most healthcare systems provide NO financial assistance. That's why we created our Advances in Lymphedema Care conferences, and The Compression Garment Fund - both Wisconsin's first and only.

Our Healing Through the Arts provides arts related workshops, led by noted artists and emotional health professionals, and are for people who have experienced emotional trauma from health crises. We held our pilot workshop, Knitting with Hope, which was a great success. We are developing more workshops, for example: sketching, painting, scrapbooking, stamp art; wreath making, woodblock printing; journaling, poetry writing, prose writing, and more.

1. Advances in Lymphedema Care conferences. We have already held two of these conferences, both of which were successes in terms of quality of presenters, audience size, quality of topics discussed, and interest for future conferences. Both conferences raised funds for The Compression Garment Fund.

We have developed valuable networks among healthcare providers, experts in Lymphedema, national manufacturers of Lymphedema products, Lymphedema patients and their supporters, media, and in the business and nonprofit world, and all of our partners and friends combine to make our conferences a success.

2. Healing Through the Arts program. We use our network of supporters, local businesses and nonprofits, artisans and crafts people, and local educational organizations, and emotional health professionals to develop our workshops.

3. Careful and realistic budgeting. So far, we are happy to report that all of our programs have more than paid for themselves.

Health, Education & Welfare emphasizes collaborations and partnerships with other organizations to make these important programs and services a reality, to reach more people in need, and, this helps us to be better stewards of our supporters' donations to HEW.

Because we are an all volunteer operated organization, we can devote our proceeds to making our programs and services possible.

So far we are happy to report that we have been meeting our goals. We have successfully presented our Advances in Lymphedema Care conferences for two consecutive years, 2018 (we formed in May 2018) and 2019, and are planning our conference for 2020. Each conference has raised funds for The Compression Garment Fund, as well as paid for themselves. We are fortunate to have generous supporters in the business community, nonprofit world and from individuals.

For our Healing Through the Arts program, we ran a pilot workshop for the purpose of assessing what adjustments could be made to improve upon our original model, and we are planning future workshops. We obtained ample sponsorships and funding for the pilot workshop well before our first session began.

We have a small, but committed and talented group of volunteers and board members who help make HEW's goals possible.

Our founder has owned and operated their own business for over 26 years, and has worked with nonprofits as a consultant, board member, and officer, for over 30 years. She is very careful to keep expenses as low as possible, seeking in-kind donations for materials, services, etc., where possible.

In 2020, HEW celebrated our 2nd birthday. Since 2019, our Compression Garment Fund (Wisconsin's first and only) has awarded over $4,000.00 worth of compression garments to Lymphedema survivors in need! Also, Health, Education & Welfare has:

1. Presented Advances in Lymphedema Care conferences, Wisconsin's first and only Lymphedema conference. Ample funds were raised for The Compression Garment Fund - both of which are Wisconsin's first and only - we've made Wisconsin history;

2. We also established Wisconsin's first and only award recognizing excellence in Lymphedema advocacy, the Shellie Stellrecht Award.

3. We have been selected to receive large quantities of donations of unused compression garments, from a major national seller of compression garments, to distribute to those in need. We are the only organization, west of the Eastern Seaboard, to be so chosen. We currently have in excess of $20,000 worth of unused, donated compression garments to distribute.

With this new partnership, we hope to expand our reach throughout the US and then internationally, to help people in need of compression garments, but who can not afford them.

4. Healing Through the Arts Program - we continue to develop workshops.

5. Launched our website in January 2020. https://hew-wisc.org/