You’ve read about our grant partners, but now we want to share with you these powerful videos of grant programs in action. Follow the link below to hear testimonies from participants in programs from Doma International, CATCO-Pheonix and Rwanda Women in Action.
Doma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLs2bR0Raa0
CATCO-Pheonix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSTofN6l0dE
Rwanda Women in Action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ttknpOq4tw
We send you our many thanks for the inspiration, celebration, and success experienced at Keyholder with Goldie Hawn!
Your generosity raised $400,000 to further positive social change for women and girls in central Ohio. How awesome?!
And to everyone who made a tribute – wow! We love hearing your stories. If you missed it or want to see that fabulous video one more time, you can do so by clicking the image at the top of this page.
If you weren’t able to make a donation at the show, there is still time to double your money and have your contribution matched dollar for dollar. Just click here.
Until we see you next, stay connected with The Fund on Facebook and Twitter for other news and upcoming events.
Today we celebrate the funding of 12 new 2011 Grant Partners. In just 10 short years of promising social change for women and girls, The Fund has awarded grants to 117 programs totaling a $1.3 million dollar investment to put more women in leadership positions, strengthen girls’ life skills, and empower more women to achieve economic independence.
The 2011 Grant Partners are:
Amethyst, Incorporated: Supported Employment Program
Supported Employment (SE) provides access to vocational support while promoting economic independence for women recovering from addiction by helping them find employment and reducing the stigma against women in recovery from policy makers and employers.
CATCO-Phoenix: Full STEAM Ahead
CATCO-Phoenix will implement Full STEAM Ahead, a unit of activities for an after-school program that uses drama/theatre as a delivery system to illuminate STEM concepts for middle school girls.
CMAA Refugee Services: Capital Park Women’s Empowerment Project
The Capital Park Women’s Empowerment Project will impact 380 families living in Capital Park Apartments by empowering and training 12 Somali refugee women to become leaders around the issue of safety in their surrounding neighborhood.
Community Refugee & Immigration Services: Providing Knowledge/Pointing the Way
CRIS assists immigrant women exercise their rights, deny abusers the ability to use women’s immigration status as a tool of control, and help participants transform their situations from dependence to self-sufficiency.
Doma International: Project Green Light
Trained volunteers through Abolitionist U become mentors to advocate for and to walk alongside a woman in recovery from Human Trafficking, seeking to reduce the number of women who relapse and exit recovery programs.
Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland Council, Inc.: It’s Your World: Change It! aMaze Leadership Journey
It’s Your World – Change It! is a gender-specific program in the Columbus City Preparatory School for Girls supporting the developmental, social, and academic needs of middle school girls by enhancing self-concepts and cultivating skills necessary to enable girls to become confident and effective leaders.
HelpLine of Delaware & Morrow Counties: The “Thank Goodness I’m Female” (TGIF) Initiative
A teen led and developed approach, the Thank Goodness I’m Female (T.G.I.F.) Initiative emphasizes the development of healthy female friendships and peer relationships through open dialogue, skill building and youth mentoring utilizing art exhibitions, a social-norm campaign, and social networking “Youtube-like” videos to change aggressive attitudes and behaviors among girls.
Mental Health America of Licking County: Bridges Out of Poverty Initiative
Bridges Out of Poverty inspires women from businesses, churches, and other organizations to volunteer as Allies to help hard-working, low-income women, especially single mothers, escape from poverty
Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio: Peer Education Project
PPCO will engage 10 teenage women as Peer Educators, developing them into informed leaders that will provide education for 300 to 400 of their female peers in the prevention of unintended pregnancies, STI’s, and HIV/AIDS, as well as advocating for changes in government and school policy to encourage women’s rights and comprehensive sexual education.
The Interprofessional Commission of Ohio: Ruling Our eXperiences (ROX)
The ROX Ruling Our eXperiences program empowers girls through training young women on issues of body image, gender roles, female leadership and career development, dealing with harassment and discrimination, healthy relationships with peers, sexual violence, and physical self defense.
Rwandan Women in Action: Refugee Women Transitional Support Program
Refugee Women Transitional Support, in collaboration with Children’s Hunger Alliance, certify refugee women to become childcare providers and start their own cooperative daycares.
The Ohio State University ACCESS Collaborative Program: College and High School Aspiring Mothers Partnership for Degrees (CHAMPS)
The CHAMPS program provides promising young single parent college women the opportunity to develop leadership skills by implementing a college shadow program for expecting or parenting teens.
This grant slate represents new and proven programs, programs in Franklin, Licking and Delaware Counties, and deep work to help women and girls reach their full potential. Thank you for your leadership in recommending funding to The Women’s Fund Board. Your wisdom is reflected in this balanced, profoundly impactful grant slate.
Simply put, women are dynamic by nature. Flip through your contact list. I’ll bet you know women who are doctors, teachers, mothers, lawyers, business owners, philanthropists, friends, writers, CEOs, and everything in between. Each of these women probably wears more than one hat, too.
When we started planning Keyholder this year, we wanted to bring someone we could all relate to; someone who has fully embraced the ability of women to be successful at whatever it is that drives them. So, who is this woman?
She is Goldie Hawn. Although most of us know her for her bright career in acting, singing and writing, she is much more than that. She is a visionary, a philanthropist. She sends a message of mindfulness; mindfulness of who you are and what you can do for those around you. Her foundation focuses on children, realizing they are the future and they have limitless potential. All in all, she gets what it means to be a dynamic woman.
Her Hollywood roles cover everything from the quirky girl on Good Morning, World to a woman coming into her own in Private Benjamin, to her Academy Award performance in Cactus Flower. Her book A Lotus Grows in the Mud is not so much a tell-all of the Hollywood life, but rather an introspective journey to wisdom and self-fulfillment. She is a business woman, a mother, and an inspiration.
So, are you ready to Strike Gold?
Written by: Hallie Kloots
Money doesn’t make a man.
Nor does it make a nation, according to a recent study, Human Development Trends Since 1970: A Social Convergence Story. Educated women do.
Looking at developments tracing back to the 1970s, researchers George Gray Molina and Mark Purser found the wealth of a nation has less impact on its standard of living than its gender roles do. It seems the more women are allowed to participate in their country, the more that country prospers (no surprise there). The greater decision-making power women are allowed to have regarding issues such as childbirth and their own education, the greater the country performs. “Demographic transitions, urbanization and declining fertility rates have accelerated life-expectancy and literacy achievements over the past half-century,” the authors write. “We believe the underlying drivers of these changes are linked to individual and household-level decisions concerning fertility and female schooling.”
Digging even deeper, the authors state that, “Human development trends fit into a larger story of demographic change since the 1950s, driven by initial levels of human development and changes in fertility and female schooling.” Women and girls, it is proven, can transform entire nations. Those are the implications of investing in them.
http://backspace.com/notes/links/2010/06/girl-power.php
OTHER EXCERPTS:
When the population of literate women was closer to or exceeded that of males, countries tended to have higher life expectancy in 1970. However, this relationship disappears in 2000.
We find that income is not a significant predictor of life expectancy –once we account for urbanization, fertility and female schooling.
Demographic transitions, urbanization and declining fertility rates have accelerated life-expectancy and literacy achievements over the past half-century (UNDESA 2009). We believe the underlying drivers of these changes are linked to individual and household-level decisions concerning fertility and female schooling. Although correlated, we do not find evidence to suggest that human development trends can be explained by factors associated with economic growth. Holding income constant, social factors seem to be driving the aggregate human development story.
By: Eleanor Rooke
Listening to President Obama in the past 2 days, it’s clear that America is facing immense challenges.
And it’s true that when the economy is down, people need help more than ever. You may be hearing from a number of nonprofit organizations right now, asking for money to help combat the effects of this crisis. In fact, you may have gotten a letter from The Women’s Fund recently, asking for a donation to help us improve the lives of central Ohio’s women and girls.
Here’s why our request is different from all the others.
We won’t use your investment to change just one woman’s life. We will use it to change the systems within which all women and girls live. We will combine your donation with countless others to invest in a measurable program that truly addresses the root cause of a given problem. This means your donation has an impact beyond the short-term. Your gift will continue to make a difference long into the future.
This is the meaning of social change. And we believe it’s more important now than ever.
To quote the President, “Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter … and we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”
