Women's Fund of Central Ohio » Mentoring

Fall Grant Partner Announcement!

hkloots — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:02:20 +0000

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.

Striking Gold

hkloots — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:42:09 +0000

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

Girls worse at math? No way, new analysis shows by Maggie Fox

Kelly — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:33:50 +0000

In the article Girls worse at math? No way, new analysis shows (see article), Maggie Fox discusses girls’ math skills and the nature versus nurture debate between one camp that suggests that girls are inherently, or biologically, bad at math, and the camp that believes that societal gender inequality produces girls’ low math scores or the perception of girls as bad at math. As a women’s studies major, and former psychology major, I have read multiple articles and participated in many class discussions on gender differences and if these differences are rooted in nature or nurture. Through such academic experiences I have come to believe that gender is a social conception which is often stereotyped, and for women, is often limited to only certain identities and skills (not as much now as in the past when women’s identities were strongly pegged to motherhood, the dutiful housewife, and domestic master). Socially, and culturally, we have defined for decades, centuries even, that men and boys are better at math then women and girls. However, new and exciting research is demonstrating that girls are just as good as boys at math, even at the genius level!

Maggie Fox points to statistics from a study published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” and to data collected from students who participated in the International Math Olympics and the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment, which illustrate that girls have the inherent or biological wherewithal to perform at the same level of boys in mathematics. This even relates to findings released in our very own One Girl: The Status of Girls in Central Ohio, which illustrated that girl students are performing at similar levels as boy students on math proficiency tests. So, to the camp which believes that girls can not succeed and excel in mathematics: YOU’RE WRONG!

But, despite such positive statistics, we do see some gender disparities in math achievement. For instance, in the United States there are significantly less female than male mathematics professors. What explains such disparities? Fox points to historical-cultural gender inequality. For decades girls have not been as encouraged as boys to excel at math and jobs which involve complex math skills are typically considered by the culture to be male jobs. I think that this must be rooted in the women’s historical roles; across cultures, women were often limited to the domestic sphere, where they were not encouraged to succeed in math and did not need math for their day to day work, especially because they were typically not in charge of managing the household finances.

This only highlights the need to encourage girls to enjoy math and to be confident in their mathematical abilities. When I was in 8^th grade, I had a challenging, but great teacher who really encouraged boys and girls to excel at math. I ended up being the only student in the school to score a 100% on the 8^th grade Math CBE (Credit By Exam) test, and I greatly attribute that success to my teacher’s dedication to my own academic development as well as her egalitarian math teaching methods. At the Women’s Fund we have been talking a lot about the significance of mentoring in girls’ lives lately. Perhaps mentoring would be a great approach to nurture girls’ confidence in their math abilities and to teach them that they are not inherently inferior in the subject! As I go on to teach secondary chemistry in the D.C. area next fall, I will certainly remember Maggie Fox’s article and the power of mentoring and dedication to girls’ math skills as I try to empower girls as best as I can to be confident in using their math skills in my class.

By Katie, Clonan-Roy, WFCO Intern