- Good evening, everybody. It is May 21st, 2026. This is the Monroe County Women's Commission. I will
- call this meeting to order. It's Maria. She's not. I know Jody's on her way.
- We do have 2, 4, 5 people here, so that is quorum. The commission shall serve in an advisory role to
- assist residents, businesses, and the government of Monroe County in addressing issues of gender equity.
- The mission is to advance the status of women in marginalized genders in all areas.
- You sent out the minutes, every one, I saw one adjustment was asked for. I adjusted and sent back out.
- Perfect. Do I have a motion to accept the April minute? I make a motion to accept the April minutes.
- Second. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from our April meeting. We'll do a
- on. Is Maria on? Yeah. Okay, cool. Julie Hardesty. Yes. Tiana. Yes. Rose. So close. Not even.
- Jennifer Belton. Present and accounted for. No, you're agreeing. Oh, I agree. Or disagreed for the minutes.
- I said, okay, I'm the one that did the minutes. So of course I agree. Molly Otto. I agree.
- Yes, and Maria Douglas. We're making them approving the minutes from April. I saw that he did. I didn't.
- I don't see her. I don't see her on there. She's here. She's in the waiting room. Well.
- We'll accept the minutes for April. Commissioner updates. Commissioner Otto, do you have any updates
- in our older ongoing business? No, we have updates in the subcommittee. Perfect. But other than that,
- I don't accept. There was one thing that I saw regarding May being mental health. There was a conference
- or something held
- by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Wellness Council of Indiana in Minneapolis
- on women's wellness at work. And I was not aware of it, so I did not attend. But I just saw some of
- the things about it. So I want to do a little bit more research and see if there are some data and statistics
- from that. But I don't have anything to present right now. Commissioner Belton.
- No updates. Commissioner Roje. No updates. She was and now she's gone again. Yeah, she keeps going.
- Well, if we ever get her in here, I will. Commissioner Hart, outside of Oldenham.
- She's saying, I think she's saying she gets connected and she's getting kicked out. So it's something
- going on, but she's trying. I don't have any updates. I don't think in the Freedom Schools Steering
- Committee, I'm co-chairing. Maria was mentioning it last month. That's continuing and I have a co-chair
- now. So there's kind of forming up a little bit more and we're working on
- working on deciding on curriculum and that sort of thing and what direction we're gonna be able to take
- that and hoping for something, aiming for something in the fall, we'll see what happens. So there's
- a lot to do, but yes, it is kind of sort of warming up, so yay. Oh my goodness. Welcome. I'm just gonna
- give my update and then we'll introduce,
- the commissioner. That's a little early council person. The only thing that I have that I heard today,
- I watched the commissioner's meeting was that it is the Bloomington, I don't know what it is exactly,
- but the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce is looking for a woman's award recipients. So does any outstanding
- community member, female, women, community members that would
- made an impact, I would look into that. Other than that? Who was looking for it again? The Better Prism
- Bureau. The Greater Chamber, sorry. It's their Women Excel Bloomington Award that they do every year.
- And it's on their website, the application for it. Okay, sorry, thank you.
- That's all I have, right? All right. Hi, welcome. Hi, everybody. I mean, I don't know, you've never
- been, right? I mean, in person. Years ago. Yes, in person. Do you want us to introduce ourselves? Do
- you want anything to... If everybody wanted to say their name, they'd go around. I think that'd be awesome
- for me, but don't let me distract from your meeting.
- Well, I will say what's interesting here except for Commissioner Belton is that we have all, and it's
- been two years, we've all been on the commission for at least four years, which is crazy to think about.
- And Maria Douglas is working on it. She was trying to get online and she keeps getting kicked out, but
- she's usually here as well. My name is Susan Hingle and I'm the chair of the Women's
- I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm the secretary. Nice to see you here. Jennifer Belton. Yanni Rose.
- Nice seeing you again. And I'm Julie Hardesty. I'm the vice chair. Yes. So we just did approval minutes,
- commissioner updates. And then we are moving to old and ongoing business, which
- We will start with outreach or the outreach committee, which is the purpose to elevate the profile of
- the Monroe County Women's Commission programs that support our mission. Any updates or?
- We do. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Molly. We're excited about our updates. So previously, Commissioner Belton
- reported on a mini mission to pass out feminine products. And we went again today to Seminary Park just
- to pass out to those in need. So we are going to continue that program, putting our logo in there. But
- we made a plan for it. We're going to do it every other Thursday around the same time.
- depending on weather permitting. But we've made a list of 10 nonprofits that help support unhoused.
- So we're going to hit those strategically to make sure that they do have a program in place to get menstrual
- products, and then just kind of let them know what we're doing. And if they don't, we can help.
- And if not, making those contacts for any other projects we would be able to help with, sweat equity-wise,
- that if it's, hey, we need four volunteers for this, help
- recruitment for that or if we can provide those hours, too. So that's what we have in draft notes, but
- we'll email out a plan, too. Good day for it. Beautiful. Yeah, it was. It was. Better than yesterday.
- How many products do you think we handed? How many? I lost count. 10? Yeah, because the bag is almost empty.
- Yeah, about 10. Yeah, if this is something where supply donations are taken, is that like, are you taking
- it as the subcommittee? Would we bring them here? Yeah, we will take donations. We haven't got there
- yet, but definitely if you would like to donate, because right now it's out of our pockets and we have
- at home and we're just. Okay, so this is going to be ongoing, so I can like add this because I wasn't
- sure if we were going to keep doing it. I'm like, I keep forgetting to bring things, but next month.
- Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. One thing that might be, if you're looking for donations, because we have a
- lot of traffic that comes in and out of the building, is there could be a box downstairs for it. And
- maybe if you wanted two boxes, we can leave one in here, and then maybe other meetings, they might make
- a reference to it, and then one downstairs just for people coming in. OK. Since you're here, I'm going
- to ask you this. How would we, I mean, because obviously we're just
- technically an advisory body to the commission. And as far as I've ever seen, the county doesn't offer
- supply, feminine products, menstrual products in the bathroom. I mean, at IU, they're everywhere. I
- can't even imagine how much IU spends on that stuff. But how could we get that? So you mean like in
- the county dispensers? I think that's just a policy change by the commissioners.
- Well, it would be cost involved because I mean, so it'd have to be a. But probably not the worst for
- the county in Detroit. Now, I hear they've got a they got people living there and a massive work for
- it. We've got a sizable workforce, but limited buildings. So the budgeting for my council hat would
- I don't think so bad. But yeah, I think the first start would be at maybe if the body wanted to adopt a
- to the commissioners to the commissioners and then, um. We could look at whatever the cost is. Maybe
- health has money for this. Um, but, you know, just kind of thinking through it.
- one question. If we did get a box or two boxes, who do we speak with about placing them in places downstairs
- or here in this room? Angie? Yeah, I think send a note to Angie just that the Women's Commission would
- like to have two boxes or one, whatever we think. But yeah, I just think literally left in the room,
- no harm, no foul and downstairs. A lot of traffic in that bottom floor. Thank you. Really?
- I mean, it's a beautiful building. I mean, I never know if people come in here or not, so. I think so.
- I mean, there's just a lot of business that comes in and out for different needs. It would also be a
- great thing to get on their socials and XYZ, presenting that as well. Do we need to, as the Women's
- Commission, do we need a motion to get a resolution put together for the commissioners? Do we need to
- vote on that? I don't know.
- I don't know if the subcommittee wants to do it. I would rather see just one presented, and then we
- talk. I mean, chances are I'm going to get dinged for us even doing products without approval. So we'll
- have to see. OK. What did you say? What did you say about handing out products? Ding. For what?
- Because it's, I mean, it's an activity. It's an activity.
- We didn't put anything saying that we're women's commission on products. We're just giving out products.
- Not on behalf of the county or? No, not right now. I mean for. Yeah, for outreach. But I think we'll
- get there if we need. Yeah, you find out if we need permission, President.
- But I think even if the commission, and I was on the commission in 2019, 2020, 2021, we had similar
- issues back then, but I think even if the commission wants to say it's from, I think, yeah, they should
- be able to, we should be able to say that, so. Yeah. You always have to ask for permission. Well, one
- thing's for sure, and two things for certain, we'll get an email about it if we've done something we're
- not supposed to, but you can, Commissioner,
- Wait a minute, Councilman Decker, you can help us out with that. I'll do my best. Thank you.
- That's awesome. I'm reading the steps to attain approval for activities and just trying to see what
- that means. I mean, I'm sure if it has a logo on it, but... But we don't have a logo. Yes. There's a
- logo. Well, it'd be still great to do it. I mean, eventually if we move to a proposal and collect and,
- you know, distribute on behalf of the county, it would be great. Yeah, we're going to continue doing it.
- Yeah, because we're community members. So we're going to do it because it's a need in the community.
- Clearly there's a need because you're handing things out and people are like, yes, thank you. And even,
- well, we had one person that said, well, I can use that for bladder control, which is another piece.
- And we had a gentleman take one. We did not ask why, but I'm assuming he may have a female that might
- need them too. So that was good to see.
- Do we have, okay, so wait, let me sum that up. So I'm gonna make sure we don't, in whatever,
- in what way, in the future, if we do want, supported by the commission, if we want the commissioners
- getting approval, we are putting boxes for collection in the courthouse, getting notices on county social media,
- And then, do you three want to work on a proposal that we could work to present to the commissioners
- about supplying mental products to industrial and county buildings? Resolution? Yes. Yes. We got you.
- Yeah, no, it's fine. We got you. Okay, you're not president. Could be. I shouldn't have went outside today.
- we'll have our next steps. Do we have any other? Wonderful information. Only thing that I'm going to
- ask again is
- get the date and the place and all those things. We're back. So give me more information. So are you
- because I know you do step with IU health. So are you saying on county property or will not be on county
- property? Okay, I just asked by asking what you're thinking. No, we're going to be on county property.
- I haven't figured out a place yet. And a date.
- So are you as we would be one of the sponsors, because we would sweat equity, but. It would be sweat
- equity. Yes. Okay. Or put on in conjunction with. Okay. Like we're hosting a welfare with IU Health.
- Definitely an activity that. That's an activity. So yeah, when we get especially good enough time, then.
- advance and we could. I'm looking for that we're looking for the fall. The discussions that have been
- on for. That might be something that we can look into when we're hitting these different spot. As last
- time we had it been. Yeah, you see it was like some reason why it was some of it here in the courthouse
- that you all see the.
- here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here.
- It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't here. It wasn't
- here. It wasn't here.
- No, that's easy. I mean, I think one of those things to have in conjunction with, I mean, like, I mean,
- handmade markets too soon, but, you know, something like that where there's already something outside
- the courthouse, so that inside the courthouse, there was something that you could do that. Yeah, we
- would have to use the inside due to our machines.
- That's all I got. I'm busy. Policy subcommittee with commissioners Hardesty, Douglas and Yarrow. Elevate
- county policy using a gender equity lens is the purpose statement. We have dates. We have, I don't think
- we have had a meeting since our last women's commission meeting.
- But we do kind of have that priority list of things that we were interested in getting into.
- And one of those, I'm seeing that Jody is online and here. So the gender equity rubric that we presented
- to the commissioner, the county commissioners, we were interested in following up on that and seeing
- what sort of feedback or use
- you all as on the council and on the commission are seeing with that. And if there's any sort of feedback
- you would have about the rubric in any way that we can potentially make it available online outside
- of where it is in the meeting. I think it's the only place that exists right now. So that's one thing
- we're kind of wanting to do. Would it be helpful for us
- to gather any feedback from our respective bodies and then just bring it back or send it back? Yeah.
- Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the commissioners, we presented it to the commissioners. So they have it. But
- I'm not sure if that is something that's made its way into any sort of use at all. But I think we're
- kind of interested to see what these bodies are thinking about it and if that is something that can
- be tried out.
- we can certainly assist in that. Awesome. Thank you. I think that's the update that we would have from
- the committee until we get to the data committee. Anything else? So committee, this is with commissioners, me and
- Douglas, where our purpose is to become a granite and who we serve through data. So as we talked about,
- a long time brewing, about the course, the V600 cohort with Dr. Henschel. So we had a meeting yesterday
- with Commissioner Madera, Molly Turner King, myself, and
- Dr. Hentschel to discuss what the scope was of the project and how that we were kind of ahead of ourselves,
- because obviously it needs to be approved. So they are working on fast tracking that. They had some
- updates about some language, because we were listed as the, whatever the word is I want. And it should
- be, since we are not our own body, we are the commissioners.
- to the commissioners. They should be noted as that. But it does look like it's coming forward. Commissioner
- Madera, myself, and I believe Maria, as well, are all listed on the course stuff. And I have access
- through their teams, which was very strange to see it in teams. Actually, a friend of mine is in the
- class, strangely enough. So we are really looking for
- that moving forward, it'll move pretty fast, because the class has already technically started. So there
- are some people, so it's supposed to be 100% online. They did get some approval to have people in person,
- so we do have a couple people. One I think is an Indy, and so my friend is named Santiago Sotomayor.
- He is, so,
- will be great working on that. I need to forward, I will forward the final proposal or the final syllabus
- once I have it updated, but I'm really excited. Look at that. We had, I know I'd send it out when I
- found it or we've all looked at the commission on the status of women outcomes when they did that a
- couple years ago.
- I mean, that was like, I mean, they did that like four, I think four years ago. And when I think I found
- it, I don't know, I feel like we have talked about it and shared it many times. So it'll be somewhat
- in that with a lot of related to sustainability. I know there's some like transportation questions.
- I know there's that kind of information. Actually, I was looking today and
- their Qualtrics forum was still live. So I was trying to go through it to see what kind of questions
- they asked for, which was home ownership and income and transportation and those kind of things. So
- I'll be interested with that. So if I find that again, I'll definitely share it. I know when I talked
- on the call yesterday with Dr. Hentschel that she has lost some of the data from the class from four
- years ago for whatever reason. So we are trying to get data.
- reach out to Marissa Parscott at the city because she was involved with the project. These tables are
- still not in the right places. Okay. There's west and north. Okay, sorry. ADHD, what do you want?
- I think this is great in progress, and one of the things that they are going to want help with when
- they create the students, create a questionnaire, is help getting that distributed to people. Especially
- trying to get it into the hands of the population that we're trying to get information from, which again,
- if you're out distributing, if we're all out distributing menstrual products in various locations,
- opportunity they are gonna before they've done like hard copies and QR codes and you know to try to
- reach everybody so that'll be great I think and I'm really I thought this would seem like so far away
- you know because it seemed like it was last year you know and then it's like already here so I don't
- know what I'm pretty excited
- I think a lot of the data disappeared when we had those strange circumstances from IU last
- year. Unfortunately, we had course pages go down. Even before the Canvas episode, we had the websites
- just disappeared. I think Dr. Henschel said that she lost data then.
- That's very unfortunate, but nothing that she could control. And we would be richer for that data. How
- long is the class, Susan? I don't know. I have to look. You know, Jody? I think it's summer one. So
- I think summer one is six weeks. Yeah, six weeks. Yeah. So fast. Yeah. Super fast.
- I did already, I reached out to Marissa at the city today about the project and she already got some
- things back to me, but we'll see if it's what she was looking for. I know she was looking for, I think
- specifically the GIS data, so we'll see. I think that's,
- Yes, that's enough. We did a lot. This is a very productive month. I had nothing under new business,
- but we kind of got, I mean, in the committee work, new business with new just projects within our committee.
- So we have that.
- Anybody want to add anything else? Why? There was, you and I, when we were meeting, doing an executive
- discussion, we were talking about the data committee and the policy committee and the work that they
- were doing and whether or not... Overlap and joining. Yeah, if that was worth it to consider. I'm not
- sure if we really... I don't know if we need to... We were thinking about, because so much of the work
- overlaps and since we have
- Commissioner Douglas on both, that it would be just as easy for me to just become a part of policy,
- flash data committee, and just move forward. Yeah, that's where we get potential for four of us meeting,
- making a quorum.
- And with the policy committee, the thing that we would be working on that's most associated with what
- the data committee is doing is doing the data visualizations from that preliminary data that we gathered
- last year. Looking at that yesterday. Yeah. The part that I'd come up with that I just never would.
- Right. So I don't know if that's worth it to try and just gather up together what the data committees
- put together and what the policy committee was looking at trying to do data visualization for.
- at some point, it doesn't have to be right now or anything. And again, because I still don't have access
- to the files, I know there's some stuff in the files for our file group, so I don't know. Oh, with the
- data under the data subcommittee? No. OK, OK. I know from Kathleen and I that there was already some
- information in there, and I'd already been working on a spreadsheet and trying to figure out which kind of
- to get what kind of questions to ask, those kind of things. But that does already exist in the files.
- I'll take a look at that. The policy committee is meeting next week. Are you thinking of just combining
- those committees? I'm not exactly sure, or at least working on that together, potentially. Because the
- data visualization that we were doing, it might be helpful to have the data committee be involved or
- be informed about what it is that we're putting together as a visualization, especially at this point,
- if there's more data coming in.
- So to give you a little bit of backstory here, counselor, is that one of the projects that we've always
- looked into since we all started, really, was just trying to figure out who we serve. And even like
- preliminary looking at the data, it is very hard to, there is no data about who the women in the county
- are, who the non-marginalized genders are.
- I mean, a lot of the data that, you know, Julie has worked on has been, you know, even, you know, it
- goes Indiana or, you know, not even, I don't know how much data you've ever looked at about the county
- and it's very hard to, you know, it's very hard to get into that level. So, you know, is one of those
- things that we were trying to look into and then trying to come up with a dashboard, you know, on the
- status of women and marginalized genders for the county to,
- you know, have. So we would, you know, promote or educate people on the website and such. So it is something.
- And that's one of the things that this class is going to help us work on is helping us collect some
- data on women and marginalized genders in the county. So to see who's here. So what do they have? Yeah.
- And we had this, we had preliminary data that was kind of a project that I was doing last year with
- the policy committee. And then this year we were going to
- do a data visualization. We haven't gotten to it yet. So since we have more coming in from the data
- committee, it might just be better to combine all together and work on it. But I don't know if that's
- really like a committee's becoming one committee thing. Page is coming to your meeting. As long as there's
- not four of us. Yeah. Anything else? Do you have any questions about anything?
- No, no, I don't thank you for I'm sorry. I'm late and thank you for welcoming me in it's good to be
- back here. We're very busy That's what counselor vital told me earlier today. I said, all right anything
- I need to know she goes they got a lot going on and they're We try to be active. So Okay, is there anybody
- fast. I call this meeting adjourned at 6 o'clock. Thank you all very much.