The Women’s Foundation is now on Twitter!  We’ll be providing updates on our work, strategies, impact and success stories via @TheWomensFndtn. 

If you’re on Twitter, please find us, follow and join the conversation!

We’re looking forward to using Twitter as a way to share more information about our work and more often, as well as to engage in a genuine dialogue with members of our community.

Join us, as we all work, together, to explore the ideas and strategies that are changing the lives of women and girls in the Washington metro area! 

Lisa Kays is The Women’s Foundation’s Director of Communications.

I am blessed to have many mothers in my life.

My mother-in-law, Flicky Hartman, will get on a plane at a moment’s notice, bad knees and all, to help take care of my three sons. She tries to limit herself to two suitcases (She knows I’ll poke fun at her if she packs a different pair of cute shoes for every outfit, but you can be sure she has them at home.), yet she manages to look gorgeous, even while she’s elbow-deep in little boys. She remembers every detail, from which kid doesn’t like ketchup to the names of the moms on the soccer sidelines to which color towels would look perfect in my powder room. And although she was very properly brought up by old-world parents, she tells a great racy joke.

My grandmother Dorothy Roberts, age 90, is one of the smartest women I know. I have discussed countless books with her (She has more patience for introspective, slow moving novels than I do.) and she got me hooked on crosswords. I do not share her talent for needlework, but I proudly display hers in my house. And although I love a good chase scene too much to share her anti-Hollywood movie snobbery, I do admire her highbrow taste in films.

My other grandmother, Lindy Boggs, age 93, can also tell a pretty good racy joke. And even when you sit in her lovely apartment, surrounded by photos of her with world leaders, she wants you to know how important you are. She is unfailingly positive, complimentary, life-affirming, and generous. She even thinks misbehaving little boys are hilarious. She also thinks it’s pretty funny when I hiss at them to mind their manners.

And my own mother, Cokie Roberts…well, it seems limiting to call her my mother. The number of people she mothers at any given time is uncountable. With her work for Save the Children, she has taken her mothering skills global. My mother will, on any given day, do a radio interview, write a chapter of a book, take her mother-in-law to the doctor, counsel a young friend, give a speech, roast a leg of lamb, take the car in for service, let my four-year-old tag along to a board meeting, stop by a friend’s book party, take her mother to a charity event, and write a newspaper column. Oh, and look spectacular doing it.  It makes me tired just to write about it.  But instead of making me worry I will never live up to that standard, she is constantly telling me how impressed she is with me, what a good mother I am, how good I am at my job, how pretty I look.  She is extraordinary.

What to give this crowd for Mothers’ Day?

How can another scarf or purse or photo of my boys possibly honor their motherhood?

Luckily, The Women’s Foundation’s Mothers’ Day card was exactly what I wanted – a way to help women and girls who have not been as fortunate as I have, in the names of these remarkable women.

When the card came in the mail, I asked for three more!

And now, all four of the mothers in my life (and my boys’ lives, and my husband’s life, and yours, too, if you let them meddle) can get a tiny taste of how much they mean to me.

I hope to make it an annual tradition. (Right now, at least two of them are reading this and worrying I won’t send any more photos of the boys. Don’t worry, I’ll keep ‘em coming.)

To honor the amazing women in your life, click here.

Rebecca Roberts is a co-chair of The Women’s Foundation’s 1K Club and a member of the Washington 100 network.

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, a national foundation-led initiative, is excited to collaborate with The Women’s Foundation to bring you the latest news and analysis on women and poverty.

Spotlight is the go-to site for news and ideas about fighting poverty.

For daily updates and links to past articles, check out “Women and Poverty.” It’s a new section of our site with a comprehensive collection of recent news and analysis on women and poverty.

Along with these daily updates, continue to visit TheWomensFoundation.org for our weekly rundown of the top news stories on women and poverty every Friday.

Here’s this week’s news:

• The Chicago Sun Times reports on a charity that provides gowns to help low-income girls attend prom.

• A Miami Herald story on local African-American leaders highlights a minister who, herself having once been a homeless mother, has started an organization helping struggling women.

• The Boston Globe tells the story of a breast cancer survivor who received early detection because of a state insurance program for the poor.

• In a story on the troubled lives of Hispanic teenagers in a low-income suburb, the New York Times focuses on a young woman who has tried to reform herself after being a member of a local gang.

• The Pittsburgh Post Gazette profiles a young woman with an Ivy League education who will devote her first year out of college to serving the poor with AmeriCorps.

• Among the questions surrounding a law that could limit health care for illegal immigrants are its effects on screenings for breast and cervical cancer for low-income women, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

• The St. Petersburg Times runs a story on a clinic that has provided free cancer screening for hundreds of low-income women.

• The Associated Press reports that federal stimulus funds will allow New Mexico’s Women, Infants, and Children supplemental food program to serve 1,600 additional low-income women and their children.

To learn more about Spotlight, visit www.spotlightonpoverty.org.  To sign up for our weekly updates with the latest news, opinion and research from around the country, click here.

The Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity Team

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity is a foundation-led, non-partisan initiative aimed at ensuring that our political leaders take significant actions to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in the United States. We bring together diverse perspectives from the political, policy, advocacy and foundation communities to engage in an ongoing dialogue focused on finding genuine solutions to the economic hardship confronting millions of Americans.

The following is an excerpt from the speech Caroline Tower-Morris gave as a representative of Fair Fund, to congratulate the newest Leadership Awardees and welcome them to The Women’s Foundation’s community.

In 2007, Fair Fund was a Leadership Award recipient, and winner of the on-line vote.  I am proud to be here this evening representing FAIR Fund, as well as honored to be able to pass the torch to the new class of award recipients, including Polaris Project, winner of the 2009 on-line vote.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Washington Area Women’s Foundation on behalf of FAIR Fund for everything, and we look forward to a continuing fruitful partnership.

Over the past year, I discovered how truly fortunate FAIR Fund was to have received the 2007 Leadership Award and to have won the online vote. The Leadership Award and online vote meant more to us than $15,000, which, of course, was also extremely helpful.

On a deeper level, the Leadership Award helped to position FAIR Fund’s presence in the women’s and girl’s advocacy and service community.  Prior to the award, FAIR Fund had been working inside D.C. schools and youth centers to reach out to and assist teens, in particular girls, who were at high risk toward sexual violence and even commercial sexual exploitation, but this award helped us to deepen our level of commitment and service.

When my Executive Director, Andrea Powell, told me that up to 70 percent of teens in classes reported knowing another teen involved in some form of commercial sex, I was truly shocked and realized that the need to provide comprehensive community support and outreach was greater than possibly imagined.

With the support and community connectionsThe Women’s Foundation offered to FAIR Fund last year, we were able to reach out to a broader D.C. community.

For example, we were offered a chance to work with The Hatcher Group on our media strategy, resulting in multiple press coverage opportunities, including the Washington Post and Salon.com.

The Women’s Foundation believed in FAIR Fund as we sought to educate the community and build support for young women and men trapped by pimps and traffickers, who often trick their victims by pretending to be a boyfriend or friend, then demand that they have sex with others to keep that relationship, and often even just to keep their own lives.

These young women and men deserve to be heard, and The Women’s Foundation helped strengthen FAIR Fund’s voice.

Starting last year at this very Leadership Awards ceremony, FAIR Fund began to form new partnerships with other Leadership Award recipients in order to deepen our community connections to other women’s programs. We formed special relationships with agencies that are now our partners is assisting exploited and neglected girls. Together, we are addressing the myriad of challenges that small nonprofits face as colleagues.  We are also there to help facilitate outreach in new communities in D.C. and provide assistance to identified exploited girls.

This past fall, the support from The Women’s Foundation continued to strengthen FAIR Fund’s role in the D.C. women’s and girl’s advocacy community when we partnered at our first annual Youth Ally Awards and Pathways event to raise D.C. community awareness of the plight of commercially sexually exploited teens.  During that evening in November, The Women’s Foundation supported FAIR Fund as we shared findings from a two-year federally funded study of 60 teens in D.C. and Boston who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation. Many of our colleagues from The Women’s Foundations were there, as were many of our own partners in the community, including Polaris Project–a Leadership Awardee this year and winner of the online vote!

The resources the award offered to FAIR Fund over the course of the year have helped give a small organization such as ours a leg up in many areas. In this uncertain economic climate, giving to others does not, or cannot, always take precedence, and The Women’s Foundation through their award and numerous priceless resources, has insured that the plight of many women and girls in Washington, DC does not go unnoticed.

FAIR Fund plans to continue the work for which The Women’s Foundation has honored us, and we are inspired to strive for even higher goals.

FAIR Fund is proud to stand alongside The Women’s Foundation today as we recognize the 2009 Leadership Awardees and the winner of the public online vote, Polaris Project.

FAIR Fund and the Polaris Project are strong partners in building a D.C. that is safer for young women and girls. 

Recently, FAIR Fund and Polaris Project staff worked together to rescue a young woman who was a victim of human trafficking.  As our two agencies worked tirelessly through the night, it reinforced the idea that no one agency can do everything.  However, this one night and the following days of assisting this young woman proved that together we were able to help her escape her abuser and begin to access services and shelter, and finally to re-build her life.

Caroline Tower-Morris is co-founder and chair of the board of directors of Fair Fund, a 2007 Leadership Awardee of The Women’s Foundation.  This post is an excerpt of the speech she gave on April 7, 2009, at the ceremony to honor the 2009 Leadership Awardees and to welcome them to The Women’s Foundation’s community.

“DC Doesn’t WORK Without Child Care!” is more than a slogan for Empower DC’s Child Care for All Campaign, it’s the harsh reality facing thousands of low and moderate income working families who rely on child care assistance to ensure their ability to work.

Unfortunately, recent changes by the Fenty Administration and the Mayor’s proposed budget for FY 2010 are only contributing to the challenges already faced by families working to make ends meet.

Empower DC’s grassroots membership base is raising their voices to educate policy makers that child care is not a luxury, but rather a necessity for all working people, and it must be made a priority.

FY 2010 Child Care Budget
The DC City Council is wrapping up budget hearings this week, and getting down to the business of making changes to the city budget, the final version of which is expected to be voted on May 12th.  DC’s budget is made up of $6.25 billion in local dollars collected from taxes and fees, plus federal money bringing the total budget to $8.97 billion. Revenue projections forecast an $800 million decline in revenue from FY 2009, causing the city to raise fees and cut programs to make up for the budget short fall.

Child care is among many social services and community programs that face cuts.

The Mayor’s budget proposes a 4.8 percent reduction in child care funding from FY 2009.  Despite Adrian Fenty’s support for child care funding when chairman of the Council’s Human Services Committee, since becoming Mayor he has proposed cuts to child care in each budget he has submitted to the Council. The child care budget was cut by over $4 million going into FY 2009, and reduced further mid-year. The number of children being served by child care programs declined by 1,300 from FY 2007 to FY 2009. The Administration has not said how many more slots will be lost due to cuts in the FY 2010 budget, but clearly the number will continue to decline under the Mayor’s proposal.

The FY 2010 Early Care and Education Administration totals $89 million, a reduction of $4.5 million from FY 2009, and a reduction of $12 million when compared to the original FY 2009 budget. After adjusting for inflation, the budget for child care has declined by $20 million, or 20 percent, since 2007.

Additionally, the proposed FY 2010 budget for the Pre-K for All Initiative is only $5.1 million, down from $9.5 million at the start of FY 2009, and will not support an expansion as intended in the Pre-K for All legislation passed by the Council in 2008.

More information on the Child Care budget is available here.

Other Child Care Challenges
The child care community is also concerned about other changes affecting DC residents, including:

• The proposed elimination of child care services at Parks and Recreation sites.  Mayor Fenty abruptly closed four child care programs in December, impacting hundreds of children and workers. The Mayor’s FY 2010 budget proposes to eliminate the remaining 15 programs, displacing more than 100 additional workers and several hundred children. According to Neil Rodgers, staff of Harry Thomas Jr., who chairs the Council Committee on Parks and Recreation, the child care centers proposed to be eliminated are all gold-quality, accredited centers that are funded by federal, not local, dollars. The budget for these programs, $5.1 million, has been directed to cover other child care activities in the Office of the State Superintendent (OSSE) budget.The Administration has not said where they expect impacted families to go to receive this care;
• The abolishment of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee.  Members of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Early Childhood Development (MACECD) were notified by letter in March that the commission, originally established in 1979, had been dissolved. MACECD had been an active body, working to bring together early childhood professionals, consumers and advocates to draft policy and budget recommendations on numerous topics including accreditation, setting rates, family child care, before and after school care, professional development, and more. Empower DC submitted a sign-on letter to the Mayor and Council calling for the reinstatement of MACECD. Approximately 200 individuals and organizations endorsed the letter and we await a response from the Administration; and,
• The Child Care Development Block Grant.  The Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the primary source of federal money provided to states for the provision of child care assistance to support low to moderate income working families. D.C. is required to create a CCDBG State Plan every two years outlining how the state will utilize CCDBG funds.

Upcoming opportunities for residents to weigh-in on the use of CCDBG funds are as follows:

Wednesday, April 22 6-8 PM
Child Care Development Block Grant Informational Meeting
Office of Unified Communications
2720 Martin Luther King Jr., Ave., S.E.
For more information call Diane Paige:  (202) 727-1839 .

Thursday, April 30th 6-8 PM
Child Care Development Block Grant Informational Meeting
Bell Multicultural School
3101 16th Street, NW, 6-8pm
For more information call Diane Paige  (202) 727-1839 .

Monday, May 4th 6:30-8:30 PM
Child Care for All Campaign Meeting
Preparation for Block Grant Hearing
Child Care Provided – call for address and RSVP
Empower DC –  (202) 234-9119 

Saturday, May 16th Noon-2 PM
Child Care Development Block Grant Hearing
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library
901 G Street, NW, A-5
For more information or to sign up to testify call  (202) 727-1839 .

Parisa Norouzi is the Co-Director/Organizer of Empower DC’s District of Columbia Grassroots Empowerment Project.  Niccola Reed is the Child Care for All Campaign’s Child Care Organizer.

Empower DC is a city-wide, membership based grassroots organizing project whose mission is to enhance, improve and promote the self-advocacy of low and moderate income residents in the District of Columbia in order to bring about sustained improvements in their quality of life. Empower DC is currently engaged in grassroots advocacy campaigns on the issues of affordable housing, preserving public property, and ensuring quality, affordable and accessible child care for all DC families. For more information contact Parisa Norouzi, CoDirector, at  (202) 234-9119  or Parisa@empowerdc.org, or visit www.Empowerdc.org.

Empower DC is a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation.

For current information on how the issue of child care is being handled in Virginia, click here.

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, a national foundation-led initiative, is excited to collaborate with The Women’s Foundation to bring you the latest news and analysis on women and poverty.

Spotlight is the go-to site for news and ideas about fighting poverty.

For daily updates and links to past articles, check out “Women and Poverty.”  It’s a new section of our site with a comprehensive collection of recent news and analysis on women and poverty.

Along with these daily updates, continue to visit TheWomensFoundation.org for our weekly rundown of the top news stories on women and poverty every Friday.

Here’s this week’s news:

• The nation’s First Lady, Michelle Obama, uses an op-ed in USA Today to call for youth service.

• A Knoxville News Sentinel columnist criticizes the “free love” revolution and calls unwed motherhood a “moral crisis” that produces poverty and suffering for mothers and their kids.

• In a column for the Chicago Sun Times, Mary Mitchell calls attention to the danger of breast cancer, including its disproportionate effect on low-income women.

• The New York Times profiles a 16-year-old girl with musical talent, but with difficult circumstances in a low-income Ohio community.

• In a Washington Post op-ed, education columnist Jay Mathews focuses on a young girl and her mother who have questioned whether accelerated classes, a popular solution to educating low-income students, are always the best option.

• In a piece on the danger of AIDS in the American South, the Chicago Tribune tells the story of a woman struggling with the disease in rural North Carolina.

• In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Annette John-Hall supports a local program that helps homeless teen girls enjoy a day of free shopping.

• The Kansas City Star reports on a woman who once gave to charity while employed in the corporate world, but who has lost her savings in the recession and is now relying on United Way to make ends meet.

To learn more about Spotlight visit www.spotlightonpoverty.org.  sign up for our weekly updates with the latest news, opinion and research from around the country, click here.

The Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity Team

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity is a foundation-led, non-partisan initiative aimed at ensuring that our political leaders take significant actions to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in the United States. We bring together diverse perspectives from the political, policy, advocacy and foundation communities to engage in an ongoing dialogue focused on finding genuine solutions to the economic hardship confronting millions of Americans.

The State of Preschool 2008, released by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), ranks all 50 states on the percentage of children served and spending per child for 2007-2008.  It also compares the number of quality benchmarks met.

The Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI) met seven out of 10 NIEER quality standards benchmarks and recent advances will have a positive impact on the other benchmarks.

For example, during 2008, Voices for Virginia’s Children co-led the campaign to foster public and legislative support for the governor’s expansion of VPI.  In response to effective advocacy, legislators allocated $23 million so that an additional 7,000 low-income four year olds (2,000 in Northern Virginia) now have access to quality preschool.  During the current governor’s administration, the number of slots has increased by 34 percent and state funding has increased by 40 percent.

During the 2009 General Assembly session, officials demonstrated further commitment to the program.  Despite needing to make severe budget cuts, the General Assembly supported the governor’s request to preserve current VPI spending.

Given the strong public and legislative consensus in Virginia that pre-k for low-income four-year-olds is a sound investment, further expansion is likely once the state’s revenue picture improves.

Kathy May is Director of the Northern Virginia Office of Voices for Virginia’s Children, a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation through the Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative.

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, a national foundation-led initiative, is excited to collaborate with The Women’s Foundation to bring you the latest news and analysis on women and poverty.

Spotlight is the go-to site for news and ideas about fighting poverty.

Starting next week, check out “Women and Poverty,” a new section of our site that will feature a comprehensive daily collection of all the news and analysis on women and poverty.

Along with these daily updates, continue to visit Washington Area Women’s Foundation for our weekly rundown of the top news stories on women and poverty every Friday.

Here’s this week’s news:

• In an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution arguing against new, harsher penalties for speeders, the author cites the example of a single mother losing her license after getting pulled over on the way to work and to drop her kids off at day care.

• As noted in a McClatchy report carried in the Miami Herald, 50 advocacy organizations have come together to ask President Obama to support the hiring and training of women, minorities, and the poor to work on new federal construction projects.

• The Arizona Republic reports that a college scholarship fund for single moms has seen its applications jump from 40 to almost 300 within the past year.

• A South Florida Sun Sentinel article on a new program helping low- and moderate-income residents move into foreclosed housing focuses on a single mother excited to own her first home.

To learn more about Spotlight, visit www.spotlightonpoverty.org.  To sign up for our weekly updates with the latest news, opinion and research from around the country, click here.

The Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity Team

Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity is a foundation-led, non-partisan initiative aimed at ensuring that our political leaders take significant actions to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in the United States. We bring together diverse perspectives from the political, policy, advocacy and foundation communities to engage in an ongoing dialogue focused on finding genuine solutions to the economic hardship confronting millions of Americans.

Tonight, Jews around the world (including me) will begin celebrating Passover.  During Passover, we retell the story of the exodus from Egypt – the journey from slavery to freedom.  It’s a story that resonates across the ages and is not a story for Jews alone.

The tradition is to tell the story as if it happened to you, adding your own experiences and reflections.  The story reminds us that, for all our modernity, slavery, oppression, injustice, fear and want are still with us today – in our communities, in our country and in our seemingly ever-smaller world.

In the spirit of the redemption that is a part of this season for Christians and Jews, I offer my version of the 10 plagues visited on Egyptians in the book of Exodus – updated for today’s Washington.

Let us not harden our hearts, as Pharaoh did, to the suffering of our neighbors.  Instead, let us pledge to act to make our community a better place for all, whether through philanthropy, political action or other ways that feel meaningful to us. 

Community-based organizations, like The Women’s Foundation and its Grantee Partners, need help to sustain their efforts to make our region live up to its promise for all of its residents.

Washington’s 10 Plagues

1.  Lack of voting representation in Congress.  D.C. citizens are disenfranchised; even worse, Senators and Representatives from other states impose policies they want on us, regardless of our views.

2.  High HIV/AIDS rate. At least three percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the one percent threshold that constitutes a "generalized and severe" epidemic, according to a 2009 report by the DC Department of Health.

3.  Over-reliance on incarceration and its devastating effects on communities of color.  Washington has the highest black-to-white ratio of incarceration (19.0 per 100,000 population) of any state. The collateral consequences of this level of incarceration – including on employment, education, housing and health – are significant.

4.  Extremely high housing and commuting costs.  Households in the Washington metropolitan area spend an average of about $23,000 per year on housing and $13,000 on transportation. Combined, these costs represent nearly 47percent of median household income.

5.  The legacy of continued racial segregation. D.C. has one of the highest rates of residential segregation among cities in the U.S.

6.  Lack of enforcement of laws that promote hiring of D.C. residents for taxpayer-funded economic development projects – and the continued lack of education and training opportunities for D.C. residents that contribute to developers not complying with the law and public officials looking the other way.

7.  Food insecurity. About 32,000 households (almost 12 percent of all households) in the District were food insecure in 2005-2007, up from 9 percent in 2001-2003. What’s more, D.C. has relatively few full-service grocery stores in poor neighborhoods: about one in five food stamp households have no supermarket within a half-mile radius of their home.

8.  High infant mortality. D.C. continues to have one of the highest infant mortality rates of large U.S. cities.

9.  High child poverty.  Nearly one-third (29.3%) of children in the District live below 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Line.

10.  Lack of health insurance.  A total of 11 percent of D.C. residents did not have health insurance (either private or public) in 2007. The majority of those individuals (more than 60 percent) were in families with at least one full-time worker.

So I ask you: How do you want to live and how will you give?

Best wishes for a sweet and meaningful Passover and Easter to those who are observing them.

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation. 

Last night, The Women’s Foundation hosted what is my favorite event of the year–the Leadership Awards Reception–where we presented each of our 10 amazing awardees this year with their certificates and announced the winner of this year’s online vote.

This year’s vote–the second we’ve done–was incredible.  Last year, we brought in 1,187 votes total. 

This year, the vote’s winner, Polaris Project, brought in 2,715 votes themselves, with a total of 8,538 votes being cast overall.

Polaris Project was selected as a 2009 Leadership Awardee for their DC Trafficking Intervention Program (DC TIP), which has combatted human trafficking in the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, and Southern Maryland Launched since 2002 by working to create an effective community-based response to curb local human trafficking network activity.  DC TIP provides comprehensive services to foreign national and U.S. citizen victims in the Washington metro area and works towards long-term, systemic change.

At the reception last night, Amb. Mark P. Lagan, Executive Director of Polaris Project, explained that Polaris Project is named after the North Star, otherwise known as Polaris, which guided slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad.  Today, Polaris Project helps victims of all kinds of trafficking throughout the world to escape and rebuild their lives with dignity and hope. 

The Women’s Foundation congratulations Polaris Project for their outstanding work mobilizing support for the vote, and all of our 2009 Leadership Awardees for their awards and for the outstanding work they did to mobilize support for the vote and awareness of the transformational work they’re doing throughout our community to change the lives of women and girls. 

Lisa Kays is The Women’s Foundation’s Director of Communications.