The DC Women’s Agenda (DCWA) is a local advocacy and policy coalition that began in the spring of 2003 and works to promote the advancement, equality, and well-being of women and girls in D.C.–and it is a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation. 

DCWA is a coalition of a diverse group of advocates, service providers, and individuals who work together to address issues of social and economic justice that women and girls face on a daily basis living in our community. The DCWA is co-chaired by the DC Employment Justice Center and Wider Opportunities for Women (also Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation!)

During monthly meetings of the DC Women’s Agenda about current events in the District affecting women and girls, the coalition determined that in 2007, as D.C. brought in a new Mayor and City Council, that it was an important time to build awareness of these issues among our new city leaders. 

Emerging from these discussions is a white paper, "Voices and Choices for D.C. Women and Girls: Recommendations to City Leaders 2007," which outlines for our city’s leaders and citizens the key issues and challenges facing D.C.’s women and girls. 

The paper gives concrete suggestions for what changes are needed and addresses topics such as economic security, housing, health and health education, criminal justice, safety, leadership and accountability and girls.

Each section provides information and statistics about the problem, and gives specific recommendations about what resources and programs need to be created and what must be improved upon that already exists in order for women and girls to thrive in the District of Columbia.

The paper puts all of the information at the fingertips of the politicians.

The white paper was distributed to the Mayor and all members of the D.C. City Council, as well as each member of the DC Commission on Women.  We also sent it to the two Congressmen who are in charge of the Congressional Committee that has oversight of the District (Chairman Henry Waxman and Ranking Member Tom Davis) and to DC’s Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, so that, if they want to, they can hold the Mayor and city leaders accountable on these issues.

The white paper was also distributed to a number of organizations that serve women in the District. It can also be accessed on TheWomensFoundation.org. 

Over the coming weeks on this blog, we’ll be going through each section of the white paper to discuss and highlight key elements and to illuminate what life would be like for women and girls in the District if the recommendations were to be acted upon. 

We hope to create awareness, as well as lively discussion and debate on the important facts outlined in the paper, and what action on the recommendations could mean for the women and girls of this city, as well as the city as a whole.  

Jessica Goshow is DC Employment Justice Center’s (DCEJC) legal and policy associate.  Being that EJC and Wider Opportunities for Women are the co-chairs of the DCWA, she was involved in the coordination, writing, and reviewing of the white paper.

The DC Women’s Agenda, DC Employment Justice Center and Wider Opportunities for Women are all Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation. 

A friend and I have a running list of people you need in your life, particularly as you edge towards "grown-up" living. 

Topping the list are a good mechanic and a good plumber, among a number of other skills we seem to be desperately lacking in. 

At last week’s graduation ceremony of the first class of the YWCA National Capital Area’s Washington Area Women in the Trades (WAWIT) program, it struck me how our natural tendency to assume that these roles would be filled by men are long, long outdated.

Because the 10 women who graduated–with aspirations including careers in plumbing, carpentry, painting, landscaping and sheet metal work–not only intend to shatter stereotypes of the types of work women can do, and are doing, but to change the very structures in which they do it.

They intend not only to weld metal, but to weld the very world that produces it.

After only 12 weeks, which, like with previous classes graduating women ready to take on nontraditional careers, hardly seems like enough to contain it all–or to produce this level of confidence, strength and, even a twinge of well-placed rebellion–the ceremony was marked with graduate’s indications that their intentions went well beyond their own economic security, to that of changing the world of work for all women.

"We have come a long way from just wanting to get a job, to wanting to make a difference in the industry," said one of the graduates before stating proudly that they planned to establish a union among women in the trades throughout our region. 

One can only imagine that this sense of confidence and comaraderie only comes from the same holistic approach to support that was evident throughout the First Female Construction Employment Class of Goodwill of Greater Washington and what I can only imagine was present in their Environmental Services Training Course. 

As evidence of this, the women discussed taking each lesson bit by bit–and refusing to move on until everyone got it.  They talked about keeping each other motivated–sometimes with a phone call harrassment plan–when getting up at the crack of dawn (sometimes as early as 3:30 a.m. to bike in from Virginia) and being on job sites in the dead of winter was almost too much to bear.  They talked of struggling through–and then gaining strength from–the mandatory kick-boxing and weight training courses that would be necessary to ensure that they could manage the heavy lifting of their new professions.

Including the mental heavy lifting that would be required.

Because, as one of the commencement speakers, Sarah Reynolds–a bus mechanic with Metro for more than 20 years–noted–even in 2007, "There are too few of us."  With part of her current responsibilities being to recruit young women into careers at WMATA, she said, "I’m not leaving Metro until I have more women behind me."

This is crucial, she explains, to handle some of the difficulties of being one of a few women in a very male-dominated world.  And the key, she says, is the support of other women.  "The negative things I dealt with, you will not have to deal with by yourselves anymore.  You will have other women with you," she promised, as she outlined a mentoring plan underway for the graduates with experienced professional women in the trades,

Joan Kuriansky, executive director of Wider Opportunities for Women, a partner of WAWIT, explained that this is precisely the point.  Construction is a billion dollar industry in this region, she said, and there is no reason that women–and their families–shouldn’t benefit from it. 

"This program," she said, "represents a breakthrough for many women not here today, because it is changing perceptions of what is women’s work.  One by one, the stereotypes about women, and what we can do, will be debunked!" 

And as these programs continue to demonstrate, changing these perceptions is always the beginning–from changing the women’s perceptions of what they can do personally, to changing their children’s perceptions of what women can do through their example, to changing society’s perceptions of women’s work. 

The graduates confirmed that, while a professional journey, it can’t be approached without taking into account the personal obstacles.  "If I can do it," said one graduate, "all these women can do it.  And we come from all different walks of life.  Not a Paris Hilton life.  A hard-knock life."

From hard knocks to laying hard wood, a path that started with learning skills has turned into a unified desire to transform the scope and scale of women’s work.   

"That’s the kind of stepping stone you represent," Kuriansky told the graduates. 

Words that couldn’t have been better selected, since this program is a perfect realization of one of the goals of our Stepping Stones initative–an early partner to WAWIT–to increase the economic security of low-income women in our region by providing access to high-growth, well-paying, nontraditional careers. 

With training programs like this throughout our region–many of them supported by The Women’s Foundation–it’s difficult not to get the sense that this is far more than shop talk, but rapidly evolving system change, which is what The Women’s Foundation, and our partners, are all about. 

About investing in women as a means of building stronger communities. 

With bright futures–and job opportunities already waiting for many–it’s easy to imagine this transformation unfolding.  In fact, with the graduates sometimes spontaneously bursting into Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now, it’s harder to imagine that it won’t. 

From victories from the personal to the professional, from skills to scaffolds of an unlimited height.

As Kuriansky said, "The elevator, I don’t think it’s ever coming down."

If it does, it will only be on occasion, but only for these women to head back down to pick up those they’ll carry up to the top, just as they have been, and will be, supported by those women, like Reynolds, who came before. 

As one of the graduates said, "We are the blueprint and the foundation of it all.  It began with us, and we have the responsibility to keep this legacy going, even after today."

Echoed by another graduate, who said, "It started with us, and it won’t finish with us." 

Indeed it won’t.  The next class starts on Monday.  

For more information on The Women’s Foundation’s Stepping Stones, which supports programs like this throughout the Washington metropolitan region, click here. 

To learn more about WAWIT, and how to get involved, visit YWCANCA.org.  WAWIT is a collaboration among the YWCA National Capital Area, Wider Opportunities for Women (also a Stepping Stones Grantee Partner) and the Community Services Agency of the Metropolitan Council of the AFL-CIO.

To learn more about similar training programs for women breaking barriers, visit our blog to learn more about Goodwill of Greater Washington’s female construction and environmental services programs.

Then, join us in building a better Washington region by investing in and expanding strategies and programs like these.  Join in the power of giving together. 

I spend my days, and many a night, thinking about what inspires donors, the power of the collective and what it means to work in a field supported by the gifts of others.  And in all those hours, spanning days, weeks, months and years, I rarely hear the word “risk.”

And yet, for me, philanthropy, in its most glorious state, is about risk, and especially the kind of risk that brings unanticipated reward.

Poor Risk!  Calculated risk.  Risky business.  Risky behavior.  Even risqué. 

We shelter its very meaning with modifiers that restrain, and protect us from the menace, the threat that risk seems to mean these days.

Risk can mean loss, of course, yet it also is about taking a chance, taking action, about adventure, change and above all, possibility.

Risk desires.  Risk hopes.  Risk wants more from each of us than we can give.

So, risk requires that we trust each other, trust the greater society, and indeed trust ourselves as we find a way, together, to create the kind of change that only risk brings.

Foundations can do risk. 

Foundations can champion emerging issues and new problems (See Gates and AIDS research!). Foundations can identify and support new and truly innovative solutions that would otherwise flounder (See vaccine development and delivery!).  Foundations can support both leaders and institutions (see Kellogg!) and ensure a stronger sector. Foundations can do all this and survive failure, too.  Their own and that of others, as long as lessons are learned from failure (see the actions of the Heinz Foundation’s regarding the Pittsburgh public schools). 

Foundations embrace and act on risk, take the chance and, in the best examples, inspire the greater reward we all share in.

Individual donors can take risks with great reward, too.  Donors, like foundations, learn about what works but trust  their own learning and their instincts when it comes to leaders, when it comes to solutions.

Risk in philanthropy is not blind, nor is it calculated.  Risk in giving acknowledges the problem, the challenge, and inspires us individually, and at The Women’s Foundation, collectively, to embrace the possibility of change.

We live in a time where risk is discouraged, where impulse is controlled, yet the very spark of possibility that philanthropy invites can only grow to action when risk is invited and accepted as essential to the act of giving.

To give is, at its very essence, to live.  And being alive is a risk in and of itself.

I bid a fond farewell to my friend and colleague, Anne Mosle, one of the pioneers of women’s philanthropy here in greater Washington.

Over the past six years of Anne’s tenure, The Women’s Foundation has grown exponentially and touched the lives of tens of thousands of women and girls in our region. Thanks to her vision, energy, and persuasive force, The Women’s Foundation today is a clear standout among the 100 or so women’s and girls’ funds located throughout the United States and abroad.

The Meyer Foundation was pleased to provide early support to Anne and her colleagues as they worked to expand the circle of people committed to investing in the power of women and girls. We’ve been grateful to have Anne as a philanthropic colleague and collaborator—most recently as a co-investor with Meyer in the Hispanics in Philanthropy Funders’ Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities.

For these past six years, we’ve benefited from her wise counsel and her very important perspective on what it takes to develop greater Washington as a vibrant community that serves the needs of all its citizens.

While we’re sad to see her go, we also know that philanthropy will be very well served by her work at the Kellogg Foundation. Anne’s commitment will continue to inspire all of us as we follow her on her great new adventure!

Julie L. Rogers is president of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. 

When I first heard that Anne Mosle was leaving her leadership role at the Washington Area Women’s Foundation to go to the Kellogg Foundation, I felt very sad!  As a Grantee Partner, and someone who admires Anne so much, it was, and still is, incredibly challenging to wrap my head around the fact that not only is Anne leaving The Women’s Foundation, but the area as well! 

But, as I thought about it more, I have reluctantly begun to appreciate what a fantastic next step this is for Anne and honestly, for our nation!  So, Washington’s loss is truly, through the impact she will undoubtedly make at the Kellogg Foundation, our nation’s gain!

I first met Anne when she invited me to participate as a community member on an advisory group for The Portrait Project.  I remember my first meeting–walking into a room of diverse, talented women (I think there may have been a few brave men present as well!) who had gathered to focus on the research that eventually became the foundation for The Women’s Foundation’s Stepping Stones initiative. 

From that moment on I was an Anne Mosle fan and donor and supporter of The Women’s Foundation!  Today, we have all witnessed the power of The Portrait Project and what The Women’s Foundation has done to turn research into action! 

As a result of Anne’s relentless ability, energy and compassion, and her capacity to engage so many others to join her, she has turned this research effort–which could have become a document gathering dust like so many other documents sitting on our desks–into a powerful tool that provided the framework and vision for what has today grown into an annual million dollar effort impacting diverse women’s lives throughout our region!

Wow!

It is hard for me to even imagine how she did this–aggressively gathering an army of women and supportive men to bring to life her vision of improving the quality of life for the girls and women in our region. 

It is also important to note that The Portrait Project was one of the first research efforts in our region to ensure that the needs of Latino girls and women were documented.

Today, Anne and her great staff have enlisted an army of regional foot soldiers in nonprofit community organizations to carry out her charge through innovative, respectful programs and initiatives. The Latin American Youth Center has been fortunate to be one of The Women’s Foundation’s Grantee Partners in this work. 

The Women’s Foundation, its community of donors and Stepping Stones have brought a unique philanthropic vision and opportunity to us all!

Anne’s legacy inspires us all to work harder and do more, while generously giving of our time and money to ensure that girls and women have the opportunity to thrive in our region.  Anne has engaged us in her vision and while she tackles her new challenge, The Women’s Foundation’s work and our work is not done.  We must keep her vision in our hearts, minds, and our purses, through continued support of The Women’s Foundation and Stepping Stones.

Our greatest homage to Anne will be to keep The Women’s Foundation strong for years to come!

Anne, thank you for your years of dedication and passion – I will miss you!

Lori Kaplan is executive director of the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C., a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation since 2003. 

Yesterday the Willard Ballroom was packed with Washingtonians of The Year honorees past and present – including our own Anne Mosle – breaking bread as they celebrated their collective contributions to the city. 

This was the 30^th luncheon honoring 30 years of Washingtonians, and as Anne pointed out, the luncheon stretched, "Back to when DC first received home rule and a new mayor, when Richard Nixon was president and there was no e-mail." 

 A Message from Donna Callejon, Board Chair , The Women’s Foundation 

As Board Chair of The Women’s Foundation, I am honored to share with the The Women’s Foundation community, that our very own Anne Mosle has been selected as a 2006 Washingtonian of The Year.  Read the story here! 

Philanthropic leaders gathered today at the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers Annual Meeting had many different opinions and thoughts on issues of local and national poverty, but they all seemed to agree that The Women’s Foundation’s Stepping Stones program is to be lauded as an effective, innovative leader in transforming lives.

In a discussion on sustainable, meaningful efforts to address poverty, Ralph Smith, Senior Vice President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, called Stepping Stones an "amazing effort" and stated, "Those supporting that effort should be congratulated, because you’re pointing the way."

Patricia McGuire, President of Trinity (Washington) University and one of The Washingtonian’s "100 Most Powerful Women of Washington," thanked The Women’s Foundation for its work on building the financial skills of area women, a primary component of Stepping Stones. She noted that the Stepping Stones approach is an important and effective one because it addresses poverty by moving from charity to investments that empower people to sustain change in their own lives.

To learn more about why Stepping Stones is viewed as a leading model in addressing poverty and empowering women and their families, check out the program’s latest report, Stepping Stones 2006: Paving Women’s Pathways to Economic Security. It explains how 5,500 women saved nearly $3 million while shedding more than $72,000 in personal debt, and more!

Let me add my voice of welcome to Anne’s. I’m Donna Callejon and Chair the Board of Directors of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation. Whew, it’s been quite a couple of months for the team at the Foundation – Thanks to all of you who joined us at the annual Leadership Luncheon. Our team has been getting ready for this signature event, refining our metrics around Stepping Stones, bringing together donors, grantees and partners for a variety of convenings, and relaunching this website.

In my “day job” I work in the web philanthropy world, and so I am thrilled to be one of many faces and voices of The Women’s Foundation posting on this blog. To have the kind of vibrant community committed to investing in women and girls we need to be active – offline every day, and online every day. This is not your grandmother’s women’s foundation! Let me tell you about some of the women who make up The Women’s Foundation.

Lisa Ross, Senior Vice President at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, was a founding member of The Women’s Foundation board. While her hair is less “big” than it was in the past (that’s a picture of her from a few years back on the right), her commitment hasn’t wavered. She’s a rock star in the strategy and communications world and she rocks. Nancy Navarro was one of our first Grantee Partners. She co-founded Centro Familia. Nancy is now a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education, serving the 180,000 kids in that district.

Marjorie Sims, currently Vice President of Programs and Operations at the Foundation, was a founding Board member….and then she left us for LA for a few years. And when she said she’d come back as a senior member of the team, we could NOT have been more over the moon. She is a star – a thinker, a doer, a leader.

Cathy Isaacson is a relative newcomer to The Women’s Foundation, but she has made her mark quickly. A lawyer who returned to Washington just a few years ago, Cathy jumped in, became part of our Development Committee, and joined the Board two years ago. Cathy is always asking the best questions, making the best connections, and living and breathing The Women’s Foundation - whether in Washington, or on the road.

Let’s talk about Linda Butler. She is the Leadership Luncheon video. Now this is what we are all about. Linda is a single mom who broke free of the bounds of a dysfunctional family, and from frustration and poverty, working with Grantee Partner Northern Virginia Family Service’s Training Futures program. Linda now is a shining example of what is possible. And that’s what we are all about.

Finally, let me highlight Charlotte Perret. Charlotte, the quiet philanthropist. She’s the one who provided an angel gift of $50,000 – and all donations made by people who attended the lunch (or their friends) in the next month, will generate 2 times their contribution…thanks to Charlotte. Matching Angel. That’s sweet.

Come back and visit, tell us your story, give us your feedback. We are open for business on this website and we are all about this – the POWER of Giving Together.

We are in need of a complete shake-up and wake-up in terms of what we expect from our leaders and what we will accept. The recent news of Representative Foley is sickening and the response on Capitol Hill is beyond maddening. This is the guy that was in charge of setting the policy agenda for protecting all of our children.

Shining a red-hot light on such predatory behavior wherever it happens is the first step to accountability. And holding powerful people’s feet to the fire is key.

Highlighting leaders and organizations that are actually working to protect the rights and safety of our girls and boys is part of the solution. To buoy your belief in human nature, here are just a few examples of what I would call real leadership:

Elizabeth Jones – who broke the cycle of poverty, graduated from the police academy and is now a police officer in Washington, DC. She has just celebrated the graduation of her daughter from college.

Veronica Nolan - who works 24/7 at the Urban Alliance Foundation to provide critical support and mentoring to young mothers raising their kids and staying in school to complete their nursing degree.

Gustavo Torres – and his entire team at CASA of MD that are not afraid to speak out and provide job and worker rights trainings for hundreds of Latinas and Latinos.

Barbara Fox Mason – who built the Child and Family Network Centers from scratch to ensure that our most vulnerable children have access to early education opportunities – even when there is no funding support.

These are the leaders who are the backbone of our community, and quite frankly our country. Wouldn’t it be great to turn the table upside down and see leaders like Elizabeth, Veronica, Gustavo and Barbara set the agenda.