As I look at the calendar and realize that it’s nearly the end of January, I am once again asking myself an all too familiar question: Where has the time gone?  How is it possible that I’m four weeks into 2012 and have yet to really accomplish much on my to-do list?  The answer — time.

This month, we invited our Grantee Partners to share some of their New Year’s resolutions with us.  Their passion and commitment to transforming the lives of women and girls and improving our community are evident in the aspirational goals they’ve set for themselves this year.

Earlier this month, Women’s Foundation President Nicky Goren issued a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day call to action on this blog. Nearly 100 volunteers responded and joined The Women’s Foundation at A Wider Circle.  A Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation, A Wider Circle provides basic need items to local families.  The furniture, clothing, home goods and food items are donated and volunteers helped sort and prepare items for families in need.

When evaluating early learning and school readiness it is important to think holistically about children and their environment.  In a perfect world child advocates and educators would only need to focus on teacher quality, safe learning environments, and early learning standards, but we know that is simply not the case.  Children live in families and there is a highly disproportionate rate of low-income children in single, female-headed households.  With that being said, as the Early Care and Education Program Officer here at The Women’s Foundation, I am extremely concerned about how the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction’s (super committee) failure to come up with a solution will affect young children being ready to learn on the simplest micro level – their stomachs.

In this week’s roundup of news affecting women and girls in our community: We wonder what Dr. King might say about the high rate of poverty among women and girls in the DC area.  The top five findings of 2011 from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research.  The impact of Pre-K on the achievement gap.  Is it time for a poverty revolution?  Plus, a young, aspiring scientist is headed for a national competition as her family deals with homelessness.

This past weekend, my two boys and I had the opportunity to visit the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.  The visit was organized through our congregation, Temple Micah, as part of its celebration of Dr. King’s birthday.  Both the sermon, delivered by a guest speaker, Rabbi David Saperstein, and the visit to the stunning memorial site along the tidal basin, reinforced for me why I joined Washington Area Women’s Foundation and why the work of The Women’s Foundation and the non-profits we support is critical and relevant now more than ever.

Restaurant Week has returned to DC and each time I brave a packed restaurant for a prix fixe meal, I have flashbacks to one of my first experiences in the restaurant industry.  Back before the Curse of the Bambino was broken, I worked in a popular restaurant that was about a block away from Fenway Park.  Always a busy place, we’d get particularly slammed on the opening day of the Red Sox’s season.  We’d open early in the morning and serve “breakfast pizza” and beer.  This was followed by lunch pizza and beer.  And then there’d be beer for dinner.  The secret to serving hundreds of hungry Red Sox fans seemed to be a good sense of humor, speed, and the ability to keep your butt away from grabby hands (or at least a manager who was understanding when beer ended up in the lap of someone with grabby hands).

We’re starting out the new year with some changes to the blog, including this weekly roundup of news and events affecting women and girls in the Washington metro region.  Let us know what you think in the comments!  In this week’s roundup: Free health screenings on MLK Day…. Proposed changes to how home care aides are paid…. Raising standards for Head Start…. Tips for teen job seekers…. And a review of a movie about one of the most powerful women of the last century.

Usually I’m not one to get into politics too deeply, but when I heard last month on the radio that a presidential candidate said that “Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it is illegal.”  The candidate went on to say that poor children should work as janitors in their schools to build confidence and pride within themselves and their schools.  I had to find out who was behind this thoughtless comment. So I commenced to Google this statement and a Mr. Newt Gingrich came up.

Last month, The Women’s Foundation was among a group of organizations and individuals invited to an important discussion about women and the economy held by the White House Council on Women and Girls.  Created by President Obama in 2009, the Council works to ensure that federal agencies are taking the needs of women and girls into account as they draft policies and create programs.