Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) (a Grantee Partner) just released a very cool new tool for our region: the 
D.C. Metro Area Self-sufficiency Calculator.
With funding from the Freddie Mac Foundation, WOW created the calculator to serve as "an online career and financial counseling tool that will help thousands of the region’s most vulnerable families move out of poverty and gain financial independence," WOW’s press release explains.
It works like this: "The Self Sufficiency calculator is more than a tool; it offers concrete strategies in moving on a path to prosperity for the whole family while providing benchmarks and outcome information that will inform policy and practice from housing to workforce strategies…by helping struggling parents compute their earned wages and develop a financial savings plan to meet their families’ basic needs."
It will be made available, and used by, "several hundred local government agencies, nonprofits, libraries, and other organizations to help educate families about the cost of living in the District and throughout the region, how their current income compares to their specific self-sufficiency wage, and how to use the calculator to map out a plan for short and long term financial independence."
Women, and particularly single mothers, are the most economically vulnerable population in our region, and therefore have a tremendous amount to gain from this tool, and the research behind it.
The use of this tool to link low-income women in our region to better paying, more stable jobs and to save towards their family’s economic security will no doubt greatly impact a vast number of children, families and our community as a whole in a positive way.
Now, that really adds up!
To learn more:
WOW press release
DC Metro Area Self-sufficiency Calculator
WOW Web site
