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 Times-Picayune profiled Ms. Grace, one of the first women to be helped by a federally-funded housing program for the disabled  and homeless.
• The Orlando Sentinel reports on the plight of several uninsured, low-income women. These include Michele Townsen, who let an infection fester for three weeks because she feared high medical bills.
• Evelyn Coke, who as an elderly, low-income woman devoted herself to fighting for fair treatment and better pay for herself and other overworked in-home aids, died this week at the age of 74, as reported in the New York Times.
• Virginia’s infant mortality rate has reached an all-time low, which state officials attribute to the creation of a commission on infant mortality in 2006 and better prenatal care for low-income women. This includes information on pregnancy and young children, according to the Washington Post.

 

• The Los Angeles Times highlights the story of 16-year-old Jazmine, who was able to temporarily escape her life of drugs and homelessness at a camp this summer thanks to a program from American Family Housing, a transitional housing program that provides counseling and life-skills training to low-income families.

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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am and is filed under Blog, Economic Security, Economy, Health, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.