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.

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.

In today’s rundown: Faith community leaders want the District to put more money towards green jobs.  | Local student are less than proficient in reading at a critical point and it could affect their futures.  | Donations to charities are on the rise in the first part of 2010.

Earlier this week we learned that the unemployment rate continued to climb in December, breaking records in Washington, DC for the number of jobless residents.  (DC had a 12.1 percent unemployment rate last month, the highest it’s been since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking unemployment numbers in 1976.)  While those numbers show our region is behind the national average (10 percent), there is one group that’s faring even worse.  The teen unemployment rate climbed to about 28 percent last fall, making young workers one of the hardest hit groups in the country.  And for minority teens from low-income families, the likelihood of finding a job is even lower.

As unemployment in Washington, D.C. reaches nearly 10 percent, and once booming industries shut down, more and more people struggle to find new opportunities to earn a living wage. 

Many of these individuals lack the skills, education, or training necessary to attain jobs that will allow them to become self-sufficient. 

Thank you to the Joint Economic Committee for drawing attention to rising unemployment among women-headed families in its new report, “Women in the Recession: Working Mothers Face High Rates of Unemployment.”

With so much public attention being paid to job loss among men, which, don’t get me wrong, is and should be of deep concern, the challenges for women have too often been overlooked.

Many of our readers and community members remember the powerful story of Laceiy and Sharan, and how their lives were changed by a construction job training program, Washington Area Women in the Trades (WAWIT), that is supported by The Women’s Foundation’s Stepping Stones Initiative.

Earlier today, I wrote about how The Women’s Foundation and The Women’s Funding Network were featured on a story on CNN about how investing in women is one the best strategies for fostering economic recovery.

Today was a bright and early, but exciting, morning for us at The Women’s Foundation!  We were up early to see Linda Butler, who spoke at our 2008 Leadership Luncheon, talk on CNN’s "American Morning" about how her life was changed by a jobs training program at Northern Virginia Family Services supported by The Women’s Foundation.  This morning at 7:30 a.m., she was part of a report on how women’s funds’ approach to economic growth for communities is a model during the tough economic climate in the U.S.

These are hard times for many, but especially for women-headed families.

Much has been written about the overall U.S. unemployment rate, which rose to 8.1 percent in February 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But did you know that unemployment among women-headed families was even higher at 10.3 percent?