– A group of Cardozo High School students and their mentors are hitting the Hill, lobbying members of Congress to support more math and sciences courses for women.  Click here to listen in on one of their meetings.

– A Senator from Kentucky is single-handedly blocking action needed to prevent more than a million Americans from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month.  When asked to drop his objection, Senator Jim Bunning replied with some strong language.  Click here for details.

– In spite of record high unemployment in The District, there is one industry that is growing.  However, many D.C. residents aren’t qualified to work in it.  Click here to find out how “Hospitality High” preps students to become part of a growing work force.

Do you have something to say?  Leave a comment below, or join the conversation at www.Facebook.com/TheWomensFoundation.

The latest news, analysis and opinion on the state of low-income women and their families from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity

 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 the 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: 

 ·         The Virginian-Pilot reports that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell plans to pare $2.2 billion from the state budget, specifically targeting a state insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women.

·         In a series of interviews with the Boston Globe, Jessica McLeod and several other single mothers in rehabilitation for drug use discuss how a program that offers cash incentives to quit drugs motivated them to dig their families out of poverty.

·         In response to comments about the poor by Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer of South Carolina, Angela Sutton, a low-income single mother of two, tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that just because she and her family depend on disability and food stamps for their survival does not mean they are lazy. 

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

– A lunchtime program at a Maryland high school is allowing young women to “open up and speak their minds.”  Click here to hear what members of Forever Sisters have to say.

– February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.  Because unhealthy relationship behaviors begin at an early age, About.com’s women’s issues blog has listed 10 facts about teen dating violence, as well as articles on how to prevent abuse.  Click here for details.

– New York Avenue NW is about to get a lot more colorful, thanks to a new public art project organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  In April, sculptures of three women in colorful bathing suits will be placed in the median.  The artwork is by the late French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle.  Click here for more details about the project.

– Advocates for low-income and at-risk children in Virginia are concerned that budget items will disproportionately affect those kids.  The item is a House proposal that redistributes lottery proceeds.  The funds will be distributed by a per-student amount, rather than the current method, which just funds at risk students.  Some school districts would receive more money, while others would see cuts.  The move would save the state $50 million.  Click here for more details.

– The U.S. Census Bureau is hiring 1.2 million temporary workers to help with the census this year, but a majority of the hiring won’t take place until late spring.  The temporary workers will be going to the homes of residents who fail to return a census.  Click here for more.

Artist’s Rendering Credit: Jaroslaw Bieda

On Wednesday afternoon, Maryland’s state senate will hold a hearing that could help put thousands of local students on a path toward making smart, well-informed financial decisions.  The bill that is the subject of the hearing will require the State Board of Education to develop a curriculum on financial education – a course high school students would be required to complete in order to graduate.

To me, passing this bill is a no-brainer.  Being able to make sound financial decisions is something all adults are expected to know how to do; but not all schools or parents go over concepts like saving, balancing a check book, or budgets.

Aaron Moore, a Baltimore high school student who will speak at the hearing, says he plans to tell lawmakers “if everybody has the knowledge they need, then they’ll be able to avoid financial tragedy like foreclosure and credit card debt, and that, in the end, helps everybody.”

Aaron’s right on the money.  Poor financial decisions guided the economy into this downturn that’s impacting all of us.  Greed on the part of predatory lenders may be partially to blame, but a lot of people signed loans that they didn’t understand or couldn’t afford.

In recent years, as soon as students left high school they were already on a road of financial uncertainty.  They could either enter the workforce immediately with little knowledge of saving or tax status.  Or they could go to college where they were likely inundated with credit card applications as soon as they stepped on campus.  The rules for people under 21 receiving a credit card changed this month – a move that will likely help a lot of students at a time when the average college senior with a credit card graduates with over $4,000 in charges to pay off on that one card alone.

There are concerns that, at a time when many states are cutting costs on education, a requirement like this will cost too much money.  But in the past couple of years our economy and the concepts of consumerism and capitalism have changed drastically.  We owe it to students to help them keep up with what’s going on.   Education could prevent this type of recession from happening again in the future.

When I was in school, my fellow students and I would complain about having to learn “useless” information.  We were assured by our teachers that, in the future, we would need to know how to conjugate verbs or figure out what happens when two trains leave the station at different speeds.  That may be true, but we also needed to know about annual percentage rates and credit scores.  So why not teach that, too?

– $15.4 million in federal stimulus funds are coming to the D.C. government and two local health-care organizations.  Among other things, the money will be used to train people for careers in health care and health information technology.  Click here to read more.

– A new study has ranked Arlington in the top 10 wealthiest cities in America.  Arlington is number four out of 420 U.S. urban centers.  D.C. is 35 and Silver Spring is 46.  Click here for more details.

– The number of households applying for home heating assistance is at record levels, rising by 15 percent to 8.8 million this year.  The increase in applications comes in spite of the fact that average heating costs are declining, indicating that families are being affected by prolonged unemployment.  Click here to read more.

– This week, Maryland lawmakers are considering a bill that would make financial literacy a requirement for high school graduation.  While supporters of the bill say that students should know all about credit scores and finance charges before they graduate, some lawmakers are concerned about how to pay for the instruction.  Click here for more details.

– Over the weekend, a group of Muslim women protested at the Islamic Center of Washington, where  seven foot walls separate women from the main prayer hall.  D.C. police officers were called in and the women were asked to leave or face the possibility of arrest.  The protestors say they will continue to try to pray in the main hall.  Click here for more information.

– Despite signs of recovery in the economy, experts fear that the ”social safety net” is too strained.  The number of long-term unemployed Americans is growing and millions of people are running out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.  As The New York Times reports in “The New Poor,” 2.7 million “jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April….”  Click here to read more.

Got a comment?  Reply below.  Or join the conversation at www.Facebook.com/TheWomensFoundation.

Photo credit: stuartpilbrow via Creative Commons

– Eviction has become a “particular burden” on low-income black women, according to new research. “Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,” said the sociologist who conducted the research.  And evictions often send families further into debt.  To read more, click here.

– Every year, over 2,000 D.C. residents are released from prison.  Now, members of D.C.’s faith community are volunteering to help these former inmates re-enter society. Click here to find out what they’re doing.

– Calvary Women’s Services (which has a program — Calvary Women’s Shelter — that has received funding from The Women’s Foundation) has written an informative blog post called “Everything you need to know about Domestic Abuse in four easy answers.”  For information on what an abusive relationship looks like and what you can do if you’re in one or know someone who is, please click here.

Photo credit: Sally Ryan for The New York Times

Got a comment?  Please post below. Or join the conversation at www.Facebook.com/TheWomensFoundation

The latest news, analysis and opinion on the state of low-income women and their families from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity

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.

Here’s this week’s news:

• In an op-ed about underage sex slavery in Ohio’s Dayton Daily News, columnist Martin Gottlieb discusses how poverty and abusive families push young girls into prostitution.

• The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has tripled in the past decade; researchers are trying to determine if the risk of death increases with poverty, as reported in the Ventura County Star.

• Protestors opposed to the opening of a new Planned Parenthood site are declaring to the Telegram & Gazette that the Massachusetts town of Fitchburg was chosen because of its high poverty rate.

• The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Nebraska Medicaid has recently restored coverage for the prenatal costs of many low-income pregnant women. Coverage will end, however, for about 1,000 undocumented immigrants.

• Sacramento County is failing to distribute state and federal money to child care centers that handle low-income kids and help out single-mother families, according to the Sacramento Bee.

For daily updates and links to past articles, check out “Women and Poverty.” It’s a new section of the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity site with a comprehensive collection of recent 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.

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

Do you have compelling new research findings about what helps low-income women with children achieve economic security and financial independence – even in these difficult economic times? Would you like to share them with the community of Washington Area Women’s Foundation?

If you answered yes to these questions, please consider presenting your research at the annual Washington Area Women’s Foundation Stepping Stones Research Briefing, scheduled for the morning of Friday, May 7, 2010, at The Urban Institute in downtown Washington, D.C.

Stepping Stones is The Women’s Foundation’s multi-year initiative focused on increasing the economic security and financial independence of low-income, women-headed families in the Washington metropolitan area. The Stepping Stones Research Briefing provides an opportunity for The Women’s Foundation and its partners to learn about the latest research that can inform their work supporting this population.

This is the fifth year that The Women’s Foundation and The Urban Institute will co-sponsor the research briefing. The first four briefings each drew an audience of more than 100, including representatives from community-based organizations, funders, government agencies and research institutions.

If you are interested in presenting at this year’s briefing, please submit an abstract of your research and findings (no more than 1,000 words) to Peter Tatian at The Urban Institute by 5:00 pm on Friday, March 12, 2010.  Abstracts should make clear how the research is relevant to issues facing low-income, women-headed families and those who are working to assist them.

This year, we are particularly interested in abstracts related to how best to re-imagine/re-engineer this work in light of the new economic reality, including submissions on:

• Demographic and economic conditions for women
• Successful approaches to building income and assets in the current economy
• The role of public benefits as income and work supports, including child care, transportation and worker training
• Workforce development and emerging employment sectors
• Early care and education
• Health and safety, particularly as affected by social determinants (such as place, race, gender, age/aging)

Final selection of presenters will be made by March 31, 2010.

Copies of all presentations, as well as audio recordings of the entire event, will be posted on The Urban Institute’s web site after the event.  Presentations from last year’s research briefing can be found by clicking here.

Questions: Address them to Peter Tatian at The Urban Institute or Gwen Rubinstein at The Women’s Foundation.

Even if you don’t have research to present please do mark your calendar to save the date and plan to attend!

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