From February 1-15, 2008, 1,187 people cast their vote for one of eight outstanding local nonprofits–the 2007 Leadership Awardees–working to improve the health and safety of our region’s women and girls.

More than 400 of those votes went to FAIR Fund, the winner of this year’s online vote!

FAIR Fund contributes to social change in our community–and around the world–by engaging youth, especially young women, in civil society in the areas of anti-human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault prevention, and through youth training programs.

Each month in Washington, D.C., up to 30 adolescent girls are identified as victims of commercial sexual exploitation. FAIR Fund’s programs work to change this reality by providing young people with an authentic opportunity to express their own realities, get help navigating the resources available to them and gain a better understanding of what exploitation is and how they can avoid or exit an exploitative situation.

FAIR Fund is making its impact on our community by:

• Working with 350 local D.C. teens, mainly girls, to provide them with a preventative educational program where teens learn to protect themselves from human trafficking through arts and empowerment;
• Training over 600 community members–teachers, law enforcement, social workers, health practitioners and legal professionals–to identify and assist youth who are at risk or have experienced commercial sexual exploitation; and,
• Training more than 100 university students to become the next generation of anti-trafficking leaders in their community.

Andrea Powell, Fair Fund’s executive director, has more to say about how sex trafficking is impacting young people in Washington, D.C. and how you can help. Check out her thoughts here.

The Women’s Foundation congratulates FAIR Fund for being this year’s online vote winner, and for contributing daily to social change on behalf of women and girls.

The Women’s Foundation also congratulates the seven other Leadership Awardees who participated in this year’s online vote.

Each of these organizations has already been recognized by The Women’s Foundation with a Leadership Award of $10,000 to recognize and encourage their effective, innovative efforts on behalf of women and girls.  The Women’s Foundation congratulates each of you!

To learn more about how you can support FAIR Fund’s efforts to reduce adolescents risk toward human trafficking and exploitation or to learn more about the issues, visit their Web site or call 202.265.1505 and ask for Andrea Powell or Amelia Korangy.

To learn more about participating in the next Leadership Awards Committee, contact Carolee Summers-Sparks at csummers@wawf.org.

I recently returned from a trip to former Yugoslavia, where my organization, FAIR Fund–a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation–leads a program designed to help sexually exploited, homeless, and trafficked girls find safety and meet basic needs like housing or legal documentation.

These 20 girls, and more than 200 like them in Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia, have mainly been living on the streets. At ages as young as 11, many of these girls have been sold into a life of prostitution and are often forced to use drugs by dangerous pimps. These are not hidden girls and often the pimps are well known by local law enforcement.  I have seen people just walk right past these children and look the other way.  They are begging for food, they are standing dirty on street corners, they are being kept in abandoned buildings that are just blocks away from major centers of business and neighborhoods.

I have many times asked myself and others, including governmental representatives, one question that I have yet to find the answer:  How can you walk past these girls? If you know they are there, why won’t you reach your hand out?

In a country where leading MSNBC reporters will casually use phrases like “pimp out,” or where top selling rap artists name their songs P.I.M.P., we are also turning our backs on some of the most vulnerable youth of today’s society. 

So, I can’t judge without also acknowledging that right here in Washington, D.C., we are also walking right past girls and boys who are in desperate need of assistance.  In D.C. alone, law enforcement identify sometimes as many as 26 girls monthly who have been exploited through commercial sexual exploitation. 

Many of these girls, just like their young counterparts across the world in places like Serbia and Kosovo, are being controlled and abused by pimps.  Here in D.C., someone looking to purchase sex from a child need to look no further than Craigslist and the ads are right there on their erotica section. Or, drive through the downtown area of Washington, D.C. late at night and you will see those girls.

Here are three simple things you can do to help right here in D.C.:

1. Don’t look the other way.  If you see a young person who looks like they may need help, you can call the Washington D.C. Police Department and speak to the Youth Division or call 911.
2. Be conscious of language.  If you hear someone casually using the word pimp, take five minutes to explain to them that pimps are not cool, that they are abusive and controlling people who exploit those more vulnerable–often girls as young as 11.
3. Get involved.  Volunteer with youth groups to mentor or speak with youth at risk of exploitation.  Many of the girls we work with from places as far away as Bosnia to right here in D.C. really just need someone to listen to them and sometimes explain to them how to keep themselves safe.

Andrea Powell is the executive director and co-founder of FAIR Fund, a 2007 Leadership Awardee of The Women’s Foundation.

It’s Valentine’s Day! 

And what better way to show a local nonprofit that you care than to vote for them online, and help one outstanding nonprofit doing work on behalf of women and girls take home $5,000 to support their work.

There are eight innovative, effective nonprofits up for the award and the last day to vote is tomorrow.

Come on, show some love!  Vote today!

Ascensions Community Services provides psychological and community interventions to low-income families in Washington, D.C.’s Wards 7 and 8.  We provide clients with the assistance they need to improve their self-concept, interpersonal relationships, and make positive contributions to their communities.

One example of our recent work stemmed from a simple gift of $100, which we used to affect a group of young women’s attitudes about themselves and the changes they experience in adolescence.

In October, myself and one of our other therapists started a group for girls ages 8-11. All of our girls live in Anacostia and go to Moten Elementary school in southeast D.C. 

The $100 gift helped pay for our “Little Ladies Tea” last Wednesday in which our guest speaker was Dr. Saunders, a pediatrician who wrote a book titled Ooops, a story about a young lady beginning her menstrual cycle.  Each of the girls was able to take home a book along with an “Ooops pack” for feminine care.

I was already excited about doing this presentation in this format, but it became all the more real to me in a recent therapy session with a 35 year-old single mother of four.  This woman had been repeatedly abused and neglected as a child.  As we were talking about her history and how her mother had not “prepared her for life,” one thing that she remarked about being most upset about is that neither her mother, nor her five older sisters, ever took the time out to explain to her her cycle and how she should take care of herself, or how she would know her period was coming.

Not only did we invite the mothers to participate in the tea last week, we also sent home information about how to start and continue this discussion–which is so important in a young ladies’ life. 

This whole "period" thing seems so small to some, but it was huge to my girls and their moms.  This past week, I’ve talked to several of the mothers that thanked me for bringing the doctor in and they all shared their stories of assuming starting your cycle meant you were a "woman now."

My prayer is that our message last week got through, that the girls are just girls, who now have to take special care of themselves once a month, and not "women" who should start having sex or think about having kids.

The Women’s Foundation has changed my life, which therefore helped me change the lives of others.  Being a woman is great, but helping women and girls is greater!

We’re so grateful for the gifts that make this work possible, and hope that you’ll vote for us in the online vote to help fuel even more work on behalf of the women and girls we serve.

The online vote continues through February 15.  Vote today.

Dr. Satira S. Streeter is the founder and clinical director of Ascensions Community Services, a 2007 Leadership Awardee and African American Women’s Giving Circle grantee.

Imagine being in a foreign country, with no family and friends, working after hours to save money, not having insurance…and getting a cancer diagnosis.

It is tough to imagine.  The reality is even harder.

Vote for Nueva Vida in The Women’s Foundation’s Leadership Awards online vote and we will make sure that more women get to services on time, so that Latinas don’t die because they didn’t find their cancer on time.

Every year we work hard so that 70 uninsured or under-insured, low-income Latinas with cancer get adequate services.  We make sure there is some one to help them understand their diagnosis in their language and we give them support throughout their cancer experience.

Nueva Vida becomes a family for many of these women.  Help us enhance the lives of many more women by voting for us!!!

Larisa Caicedo is executive director of Nueva Vida, a 2007 Leadership Awardee.

“How did your organization get started?” is always one of the first questions people ask when they hear about the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF).

Walk with me down memory lane.  In 1995, several volunteers at the DC Rape Crisis Center Hotline encountered a woman who was pregnant as a result of rape. They reached out to family and friends to raise enough money for her to have the abortion she wanted. The volunteers, in fact, raised more than enough. When they tried to return the unused money to donors, they were told “just save it for next time,” and the DC Abortion Fund was founded.

Today, more than a decade later, we’re proud to say that we don’t turn anyone away and last year we provided financial assistance to more than 200 low-income women in the DC metropolitan area.

One of our proudest moments was helping Lauren*, a 17 year-old student who came to DCAF when she discovered she was about 10 weeks pregnant.  She sought help at her school in Maryland and her guidance counselor contacted DCAF about her circumstances. From a part-time job, Lauren had saved $50 from her last paycheck. Her mother was not working and her father was in jail. After postponing her appointment twice because she was unable to raise enough money, Lauren was soon seen at a local clinic because of financial support from the DC Abortion Fund, her godmother, and friends.

And now, DCAF is in the running with seven other amazing non-profits who have been selected by The Women’s Foundation as leaders and innovators in our community.

We got three things from The Women’s Foundation:

• a $10,000 award for our work with low-income women and girls;
• a nod that we are leading the change we wish to see in our community; and,
• a lot of encouragement to keep going.

Through the online vote, DCAF could win an additional $5,000. Here’s what that means to us:

$5,000 = 29 more women we can help
$5,000 = Another year of services through our free, confidential hotline
$5,000 = Improved access to reproductive healthcare

The online vote is only going on for another week and a half. 

Get counted!  Cast your vote right now.

Thanks Washington Area Women’s Foundation for your support!

Tiffany Reed is president of the DC Abortion Fund, a 2007 Leadership Awardee.

*Names changed for confidentiality

Feeling a bit left out since it’s Super Tuesday but we have to wait another week to vote?  Antsy to have your say?  Adamantly insisting that you should be voting today, even though you shouldn’t?  All those Facebook SuperPoke election options have you longing to participate in a democratic process?

Never fear, The Women’s Foundation is here.  We’ll let you vote today in our online Leadership Awards vote, no matter who you are or where you live.  We don’t even care if you’re registered or not and we won’t ask to see ID.

If you have an opinion about changing communities to improve the lives of women and girls, we have an online ballot for you!

The winning organization will win a $5,000 award, and you’ll come away with the empowered feeling of anyone anywhere else who has been to the polls.

For a little inspiration on the matter, Seth Godin has a great post today featuring lessons from voting.

Check it out, and then put his list to the test by participating in our poll.

Because it’s Super Tuesday, and there’s no sense feeling left out.  Vote now.

The DC Women’s Agenda is very concerned over the DC Housing Authority’s plan to purge the waiting list for the Housing Voucher Program. The DC Housing Authority (DCHA) is attempting to reach the 57,000 families by mail in a two-month period and if the family does not respond by March 11th, 2008, the family will be taken off the wait list.

Many of these very low-income families, the majority who were making less than $30,000 at the time of their application, are transient and/or homeless.

Some of them have been on the waiting list for over seven years.

DCHA is using the address placed on the application for the voucher to locate these families. In many cases, the address was a temporary shelter or that of a relative who has long since moved without a current forwarding address. DC shelters do not have the resources to make thousands of calls to track these families down and certainly cannot undertake this task on such a short timeline.  And, in some instances, these families are fleeing domestic violence and are currently in a shelter with an undisclosed address.

The DC Women’s Agenda is recommending that the DCHA extend the timeline for one year and establish a plan in consultation with service providers to the homeless to include public service announcements, posters in the metro and buses and other methods of communication.

Debbie Billet-Roumell is Coordinator of the D.C. Women’s Agenda, a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation.  The DC Women’s Agenda is a local advocacy and policy coalition, comprised of a broad group of organizations and individuals, to promote the advancement of equality health and well-being of women and girls in Washington, D.C. The DC Women’s Agenda is chaired by the DC Employment Justice Center and Wider Opportunities for Women–both of which are also Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation

The primaries aren’t the only elections where women can really make a difference. 

Starting today and going through February 15, anyone interested can contribute their voice to an online vote for one of eight nonprofits that they think is doing the most to improve the health and safety of women and girls throughout the Washington metropolitan area.

The eight organizations are The Women’s Foundation’s 2007 Leadership Awardees, selected for $10,000 awards because of their effective, innovative work on behalf of women and girls.

The winner of the online vote will win an additional award of $5,000 to support their work.

It’s all part of The Women’s Foundation’s efforts to make philanthropy accessible to everyone, much like The Case Foundation is doing through its new experimental online fundraising contest.  The Case Foundation is hosting the contest largely to raise awareness about different online fundraising tools.

We’re doing it to make you aware of the excellent work being done by organizations right here in our community, and to inform and gather feedback about the strategies and approaches viewed as the most effective in improving the lives of women and girls.

So, what do you think will make the greatest impact on the health and safety of women and girls? 

Providing mental health services to low-income families?  Training to help identify and assist children that have been coerced into prostitution?  Support for women affected by cancer or HIV/AIDS?  Empowering women through training and seminars in self-esteem, health, effective parenting?  Providing funding to help women who couldn’t otherwise afford to have an abortion?

Read about the realities of the health and safety of women and girls in our region, and then have your say today in our online vote, and help support work that you really believe in.  That, after all, is what effective philanthropy is all about!

Anyone can vote!  Vote now through February 15, 2008! 

And, if you’d like to share your thoughts about what strategy you support and why, email me (lkays@wawf.org) to discuss being a guest blogger or leave a note in comments! 

Also, drop me a line if you’re interested in volunteering to serve on the next Leadership Awards Committee.  Not only do you get to support and learn about awesome organizations like these, but it’s fun!