Read on to find out what some of our grantees will be doing for our region in 2012 and tell us in the comments below what you envision for women and girls this year.  Washington Area Women’s Foundation will be sharing our own list of resolutions later this month in a special e-mail message from Foundation President Nicky Goren.  Make sure you learn what we’re planning for 2012 by signing up to get monthly e-mails today!

IWPR’s 2012 Resolutions

• During this election year, get people talking about the issues that affect women, such as jobs and the economy, the gender wage gap and workplace discrimination, STEM education, Social Security and retirement, work/family balance, and maternal and child health.
• Celebrate our 25^th anniversary by marking the progress that women have made while highlighting areas where policy changes could make a huge difference in advancing women, families, and communities.
• Illustrate the current status of women displaced by Hurricane Katrina through an upcoming report that also identifies their specific needs.
• Improve success rates for student parents by sharing best practices and forging strong partnerships with administrators, practitioners, advocates, and policymakers within the worlds of higher education, youth development, and early care and education.
• Give young women opportunities to gain career experience while expanding their knowledge of research and policy issues through our internship and fellowship programs.

Goodwill of Greater Washington’s 2012 Resolutions

• In 2012, Goodwill of Greater Washington resolves to train, equip and place nearly 200 people into local jobs that support the local economy. We anticipate that these 200 jobs will come through the continued expansion of Goodwill’s retail stores, as well as the placement efforts from our intensive job training programs;
• Goodwill of Greater Washington also resolves to continue providing 600+ jobs to local residents through our retail stores, janitorial contracts, and administrative and support divisions, many of which are filled by people who face significant disabilities or other barriers to employment.

NOVACO’s 2012 Resolutions

At a client Life Skills meeting at NOVACO in January, several clients set goals and made resolutions.  They included:

• believing in themselves so that they could achieve their goals;
• being better parents; and
• setting small goals and telling themselves that they could accomplish those goals.

One mother, Kay, reflected on how much she’s achieved so far.  She earned her high school diploma through night classes, learned to drive and got her driver’s license, and worked with lawyers to get a work permit.  She also improved her parenting skills while she worked full-time at a restaurant and was offered a management position after just one year.  She volunteered her free time as a pen pal and greeter for the USO.

DCVLP’s 2012 Resolution

The DC Volunteer Lawyers Project resolution is that every victim of domestic violence in DC seeking a civil protection order who wants representation by an attorney will have one this year.

SMYAL’s Women’s Leadership Institute’s 2012 Resolutions

• Provide a much-needed free space for young women to gather and form community.
• Using that space, build our community of women and strengthen our bonds through discussion and shared service.
• Promote further discussion about maintaining healthy relationships, recognizing unhealthy relationships, and combating domestic violence.
• Develop connections to extend our diverse community deeper into the DC metro area and beyond.
• Seek out community partners and collaborate on at least four service projects.
• Connect more young women to mentorship opportunities with local volunteers.
• Long-term resolution: Create a community of confident, empowered women through opportunities for leadership development and civic engagement.

FAIR Girls’ 2012 Resolutions

We, FAIR Girls, resolve to work as hard as we can to make sure that by the end of 2012…

• 200 teen girl survivors of exploitation have received compassionate care, including counseling, emergency housing, assistance in finding legal and medical support, resume building and job placement, educational attainment support, and a sense of family and community at FAIR Girls.
• 1000 teen girls and boys in high schools and youth shelters have participated in our Tell Your Friends workshop and have learned how to keep themselves safe from sexual exploitation and trafficking.
• 1000 law enforcement officers, teachers, and social workers are better able to identify and assist victims of trafficking having attending a FAIR Girls training.
• A law, inspired by Daisy, will have passed in Washington, D.C. ensuring that all missing teenage girls are considered “critical missing” and have access to FAIR Girls and our partners’ services when they are found.
• 2000 hours of art therapy and economic empowerment workshops will have helped inspire and restore more than 125 girls.

Thank you to the Grantee Partners who shared their resolutions with us!  You can share your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to register for our e-newsletter to learn more about The Women’s Foundation’s plans for 2012.

Tags: 2012, resolutions, women, girls, unemployment, jobs, economy, trafficking, domestic, violence, education

– Ahead of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Women’s Foundation President Nicky Goren visits the MLK Memorial and reflects on what Dr. King would think about more than 200,000 women and girls living in poverty in the DC region.

– The Women’s Foundation is inviting supporters to join us and volunteer at A Wider Circle on MLK Day.  Click here for details.

– The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) — a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner — has posted a list of their top five findings of 2011. Topics on the list include how women have fared during the economic recovery, the unmet child care needs of student parents and how much paid sick days would save taxpayers.

– East of the River Magazine explores the innovative work of AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School.  The article also takes a look at the impact a quality Pre-K education can have on the achievement gap.  AppleTree is a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner.

– “In the fight against poverty, it’s time for a revolution,” David Bornstein writes in a commentary on The New York Times website. Bornstein calls for re-defining poverty, restructuring how social services are handled, and focusing on collaborative, long-term solutions.

– Here’s your feel great story of the week: a 17-year-old Long Island high school student whose family had to move into a homeless shelter a year ago is a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search competition.  Samantha Garvey says she doesn’t have the best home life, but she hopes that she made her parents proud by being one of just 300 students nationwide to participate in the semifinals of the competition.  You can watch her story here:

Tags: women, girls, dc, poverty, homeless, education, intel, science, career, early care, children

When I was doing my job well, none of my customers knew how frazzled I was or how hard I was working – and that’s sort of the double-edged sword of making a job look easy.  Working in a restaurant is tough.  Everyone – from the hostess at the front of the house to the food preparers at the back of the house – is on their feet for hours at a time and is constantly moving.  There’s always something to carry and those who work in the kitchen are enduring extreme heat.

If you’re having a great dining experience, you won’t know any of that.  You also won’t know if the cook is sick, if your server isn’t being fairly paid, or if your food runner can’t get a promotion because of gender or race discrimination.

Restaurant Opportunities Center-DC (ROC-DC), however, believes that you should educate yourself about where you eat.  A Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation, ROC-DC is a membership-based worker center dedicated to winning improved conditions and raising industry standards for all D.C. restaurant workers.  They’ve also released a diners’ guide that makes it easy for customers to evaluate more than 150 restaurants nationwide.

“More than half of all restaurant workers earn incomes below the federal poverty line, and workers of color are concentrated in the industry’s lowest-wage positions,” according to Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Women make up a slight majority of all restaurant employees.

Some restaurants don’t have paid sick days, which means that employees go to work even when they’re sick and there are signs of discrimination.

“Something that’s very chilling to us… [is that] in DC, there’s nearly a 50% wage differential between white women and women of color in the restaurant industry,” says Bonnie Kwon, a coordinator at ROC-DC.

Fortunately, there are plenty of restaurants that are committed to providing employees with fair compensation and a safe work environment.  The diners’ guide rates restaurants and lists those that pay fair wages and offer benefits like sick days.   In addition to using the diners’ guide, Bonnie suggests that you ask servers and managers what their policies are and how much staff is paid. “Be an aware, conscious consumer,” she adds.

If you’re headed out to enjoy a meal during restaurant week or at any other time, I suggest taking a quick look at the Diners’ Guide 2012, which is available for free online.  The more enjoyable your meal, the more likely it is that the restaurant staff is working extremely hard to make the experience a good one.  They, like all of us, deserve the respect and dignity of a fair work place.

One more thing – even though I made a joke about it earlier, putting your hands on a waitress or waiter is not funny; it’s sexual harassment, so be sure to tip and keep your hands off your server.

Tags: dc, restaurant week, diners guide, restaurant, fair pay, sick days, server, waitress, waiter, rules, roc

Wendy-Nia Griffin is the S.I.S.T.E.R.S program director at Family Support Center, a Maryland nonprofit that offers social and mental health services to families and schools in the metro area.  FSC has received grants from The Women’s Foundation for the S.I.S.T.E.R.S. (Self, Image, Strength, Tenacity, Empathy, Responsibility, Success) after-school empowerment program.

From one S.I.S.T.E.R.S. to another sister — this program is making a difference in the lives of tween girls by  imbuing concrete coping and decision-making skills.  The S.I.S.T.E.R.S. groups go straight to the crux of what impacts young girls like bullying and self image, healthy relationships, peer pressure and healthy bodies. The girls set the agenda and thus the group is socially and culturally relevant.

Part of being relevant means taking a look at areas that need improvement, so we recognized that the U.S. lags behind in leadership in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields.  That prompted us to start an initiative within S.I.S.T.E.R.S called S.I.S.T.E.R.S in Science.  Our agenda remains ambitious and has included a trip to the National Science and Engineering Festival and visits from traditional scientists as well as kitchen scientists (who showed us that scientists can really cook!).

Our culminating event will take us to visit the National Institutes of Health, to expose the S.I.S.T.E.R.S. to world renowned scientists.  There, they will get to use NIH’s top notch facilities in hands on experiments.  Next year the S.I.S.T.E.R.S. program will send the winner of the S.I.S.T.E.R. in Science of the Year Award to the University of Maryland’s Women in Engineering Program.  All we ask is that when she wins the Nobel Prize for Science and Engineering, she remembers to give a shout out to the S.I.S.T.E.R.S.!

Photo: A member of the S.I.S.T.E.R.S. program investigates the wonders of the human brain.  Photo courtesy of Wendy-Nia Griffin.

Coalition Releases New Report Highlighting Low Wages, Discrimination, Health Risks, and Opportunity for Improvement in DC’s Growing Restaurant Industry

The DC restaurant scene has received increasing praise in national food circles due to innovative restaurants opening weekly (even through the recession) and a growing cadre of local celebrity chefs.  Unfortunately, most restaurant employers have not shared this love with their workers. Gender discrimination remains pervasive and tends to affect minority workers at a higher rate.

A new report from the DC Restaurant Industry Coalition (which includes Women’s Foundation Grantee Partners Restaurant Opportunities Center of DC and the DC Employment Justice Center, as well as DC Jobs with Justice, ) takes a look at the wages and working conditions of DC restaurant workers.   It was released on Valentine’s Day at a breakfast summit at Eatonville Restaurant.  The report, based on a study of nearly 600 restaurant workers and employers, was completed by the Coalition last year.  It illustrates the pervasive low wages and discrimination in the mostly non-unionized restaurant industry.  The report also highlights the success of responsible employers, and suggests policy improvements to increase the health of the industry for everyone involved.

At the February 14th summit, D.C. hostess Katherine Jiménez described the gender segregation in hiring practices.  “They like young girls to be in the front…. The position traditionally for females is greeter, people who take care of the reservations….  I know some men who have applied for this position, because they like working with people and doing something other than working in the back of the house or being servers. [Management] would accept the application but not hire the person. There [are] no male greeters.” On the other hand servers, one of the highest paid positions in the restaurant, “[of about] 30 servers, three are female; it is very male-dominated.”

After accepting the hostess position, Jiménez was informed that during the 6-8 hour shift, she “must wear high heels [of] a specific style and height….  [In the job description, this detail] wasn’t there.”  She addressed with management the discomfort of this uniform requirement and the fact that it is a sexist practice.  The manager told her: “I don’t think it’s sexist, because if you were a man you wouldn’t have this job.”

Gender discrimination was also a part of the promotion opportunities and professional development policies of the restaurant.  Jiménez requested more training in order to learn more about wine and menu knowledge and in the hopes of being promoted to a server. “I asked [the manager]if I could apply to be a server.  Learn more about the food, learn more about wines.  He sat down with me and he told me he didn’t see me doing something like that.”

It is time to translate the country’s respect for restaurants into fair labor conditions for restaurant workers. Improving jobs will lead to better food, happier consumers, and more stable businesses.  As you enjoy a meal with family and friends, remember your fellow workers in the kitchen and dining room who make this act possible.

Please click here to learn more and read the report from the DC Restaurant Industry Coalition.

Nikki Lewis is a coordinator at Restaurant Opportunities Centers United-DC.

Tags: behind, the, kitchen, door, summit, restaurant, dc, restaurant opportunities centers united, waitress, discrimination, hostess, low, wage, study,

– Nearly 13 percent of D.C. households are struggling with hunger, reports our Grantee Partner DC Hunger Solutions.  4.5 percent of residents are living in households that have “very low food security.”

– In her latest column, The Washington Post’s Petula Dvorak takes a look at two pieces of big news in the District this week: the announcement that Wal-Mart would be opening four stores in D.C. and Council member Marion Barry’s proposal to limit TANF benefits to five years for local residents.

– The Washington Post also reports that many of the 500 people who applied for positions at D.C.’s new IHOP were overqualified for the positions. A large number had also been looking for work for more than six months.

– Carol Trawick has been named 2010 Philanthropist of the Year by the Community Foundation of Montgomery County.  The organization chose Trawick because of her work with more than 90 nonprofits in the county through the foundation she and her late husband started, reports The Washington Post.

Tags: dc, hunger, solutions, food, marion barry, wal-mart, welfare, tanf, ihop, jobs, employment, carol trawick, montgomery county

– Our Place, DC, a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner, is profiled by Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak.  The column traces the difficulties women face as they reintegrate into the community after being incarcerated.  Our Place, DC helps to ease their transitions.

– The Women’s Economic Security Campaign (WESC) was featured on the Post’s website for announcing its effort to urge the public and private sectors to help low-income women by helping them secure quality child care.  The Women’s Foundation is a member of WESC.

– The Meyer Foundation has announced the winners of its 2010 Exponent Awards which honor nonprofit leaders.  Among the five winners is Layli Miller-Muro, the executive director and co-founder of Tahirih Justice Center, a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner.

Tags: our place dc, women's economic security campaign

The latest news, analysis and opinion on the state of low-income women and their families from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. For the week ending 9/17/2010: How sports can help homeless women get back on their feet.  Plus, fundraising helps women fight breast cancer with free treatments.

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:

·Once a single mother living below the poverty line, Janet Gray tells the Californian that she is back on her feet and trying to help those who face difficult financial situations by competing in a triathlon to raise money for Salinas’ Dorothy’s Place,  a homeless shelter.

·Aisling Rose O’Grady, a 21-year-old who has been living in shelters for months, believes she will have a second opportunity to create a better life when she heads to Brazil to compete against other homeless women in the Homeless World Cup, according to the Oregonian.

·The Daily Press interviews Deloris Borum about the Natasha House, a shelter Borum just opened that will house women who have recently become homeless due to job loss or divorce.

·The Orange County Register reports that thanks to money raised by the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, homeless women that have been diagnosed with breast cancer, like Geraldine Watts, are able to receive free treatment.

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

Tags: women, breast, cancer, treatment, soccer, triathlon, homelessness

– Washington, DC needs to change the affordable housing law to promote homeownership, writes Shiv Newaldass in The Washington Post. Newaldass — the director of advocacy at Manna, Inc. (a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner) — adds that promoting homeownership is “the most fundamental way of addressing the asset disparity in the District.”

– New standardized test results released last week by the Virginia Department of Education show widespread disparity in public education in Arlington. Hispanic and black students and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds were among the student groups that failed to meet federal standards for English or math.  According to the Arlington Connection, the “disparity creates a two-tier system of public education in Arlington….”

– A free booklet that highlights the achievements of women who shaped Rockville’s history and heritage has been released in Montgomery County.  The booklet’s publication coincides with the 90th anniversary of Women’s Equality Day on August 26.  Click here for details on the booklet and where it’s available.

Tags: women's, equality, day, home, ownership, dc, arlington, public, education, testing, rockville

– Tune in to the Kojo Nnamdi Show this afternoon to hear Capital Area Asset Builders’ (a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner) Savings Program Director discuss economic security during the “Great Recession.”  Emily Appel will be on WAMU 88.5 at around 1 p.m.

– Deans from local private high schools will get together in October to discuss a crackdown on relationship violence after one former prep school student was allegedly killed by another.  The meeting is in response to the May beating death of 22-year-old University of Virginia student Yeardley Love.  Her former boyfriend has been charged with her murder.

– 40 billionaires have committed to the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half of their money to charitable causes.  Can those of us who aren’t billionaires follow their examples?  Philanthropic Capital Advisors’ Stephanie Risa Stein says “charitable giving is a basic value for everyone, not only for the wealthy….”

Tags: recession, capital, area, asset, builders, philanthropy, domestic, violence, yeardley, love