What have Ms. Foundation for Women grantees been up to lately? Read below to learn how the groups we support are changing the world around us -- one day at a time.
Joining forces with more than 70 other organizations, Ms. Foundation grantee Wider Opportunities for Women issued a statement in support of the affordable transportation proposal outlined by President Obama in his State of the Union address. As these projects, and debate around them, moves forward, WOW will work to ensure that women and communities of color get their fair share of the many expected jobs and contracting opportunities in construction, maintenance and operations that a national investment in improving our transportation infrastructure is likely to create.
A new tool unveiled by the Western States Center might help revolutionize the way grassroots organizations work -- and how effective they are in the long-term. “Capitol Gains: Traditional Vs. Movement Building Approach” is designed to help organizations move beyond organizing around legislative issues alone, by showing them how to incorporate long-term movement-building approaches into their organizing strategies. An initiative of WSC's VOTE (Voter Organizing Training and Empowerment) program, the report offers a useful chart for identifying key differences between legislative versus movement-building outcomes; make sure to download [pdf] your copy today.
Join SAFER and V-Day's Winter Break Challenge and submit your school's sexual assault policy to their innovative, movement-building, online database by Monday, January 31!
Ms. Foundation grantee Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), a group that builds the power of students to hold their schools accountable for preventing and responding to violence on campus, is in the throes of a great campaign, the Campus Accountability Project. CAP, a partnership with the terrific anti-violence organization V-Day, encourages students to research and submit their school's sexual assault policy to an online database, a tool used by student-led movements to reform policies in colleges and universities nationwide. CAP makes accessible successful policies and identifies the serious gaps in others: for example, so far, 75% of schools in the database offer 24-hour crisis services to survivors, while only 7% include a drug and alcohol amnesty clause for survivors, something SAFER and V-Day say is crucial.
So take part in and ask others to join SAFER and V-Day's Winter Break Challenge! While they'll continue to accept entries in the coming months, they're in their final push to get as many students as possible to submit their schools' sexual assault policies by Monday, January 31. Watch and share the creative video below, "Why Policy?"; register and submit your campus policy in an easy, step-by-step process at www.safercampus.org; and tell your family members and friends to do the same!
Domestic Workers United is on a roll! Not only did our fabulous grantee, a member-led organization of nannies, elderly caregivers and housekeepers in New York City, succeed in persuading New York State to pass historic legislation last year, they've now entered the ring with Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert. Watch this fantastic video of DWU organizer Christine Yvette Lewis in her interview on "The Colbert Report" last night. Congratulations DWU and Christine for spreading the message of domestic workers' human rights to millions nationwide -- you worked it!
Want to be inspired? Check out this music video, produced by the Climate Change Crew -- winners of Ms. Foundation grantee Green For All's 2010 "Dream Reborn Story Contest."
The "Crew"-- a group of young, inner-city environmentalists from Minnesota's Twin Cities -- has put together a video that not only raises awareness of the environmental dangers faced by low-income communities and communities of color, but also encourages other youth to play a role in building a green economy that can "provide access and opportunities for all." One thing's for sure: theirs is a unique and refreshing vision of what "green" really looks like.
Read more about the Climate Change Crew and their work to inspire a new, diverse generation of green activists -- and watch this background video about what drove them create such an influential piece of social justice media.
Meet Hollaback! Executive Director Emily May, and learn how she and you can stand up to street harassment.
The Ms. Foundation is proud to support social justice trailblazers like Emily May and her Hollaback! crew. We were one of the first to fund Hollaback! -- an organization that uses online and mobile technology to crowd-source stories of street harassment, a daily occurrence for many women and LGBTQ individuals worldwide.
Noting that cat calls and other forms of sexual harassment in public places were often ignored or overlooked by law enforcement and policymakers, Emily May and some of her friends took the matter into their own hands. In 2005, they started a blog in New York City that aimed to track, catalog and report instances of street harassment -- a widespread phenomenon that in their minds helps create a "cultural environment that makes gender-based violence okay." That blog has grown into an international movement, with local chapters emerging from Egypt to Australia to Canada.
Ultimately Hollaback! aims to raise the profile of sexual harassment on the street, to bring it to the attention of law enforcement and policymakers, and to fight for a culture that does not allow street harassment to be the "'price you pay' for being a woman or for being gay."
What happens when poor women are denied access to safe abortions? Just ask folks in Pennsylvania, who are now dealing with the fallout from recent revelations of substandard, sometimes deadly, conditions at a "rogue" abortion clinic in West Philadelphia.
Kermit Gosnell, an unlicensed "doctor" who ran the Women's Medical Society for more than 30 years, is now charged in the death of at least one patient and seven newly born babies at his clinic, which largely serves low-income women and women of color. The abuses that Gosnell and his staff are accused of are nothing short of horrific -- and it's all but certain that anti-abortion forces will seize on them as support for the notion that abortion in this country should never be legal.
But as Daniel Denvir points out in an article now running simultaneously on RH Reality Check and AlterNet, abortion foes have once again got it entirely backwards. It's not abortion itself that is to blame for these lost lives and barbaric practices; rather, it's the policies advocated for by anti-abortion activists that bear the burden of guilt here -- particularly those that deny government funding for abortion -- because they too often "[force] women into... life-threatening situations."
How are the Ms. Foundation's grantees igniting change this week? Take a gander below to find out.
To commemorate the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Ms. Foundation grantee Choice USA brought together six young reproductive justice leaders for a "royal rumble" over the future of reproductive rights. The event -- called We are the Champions -- featured three rounds of intense debate around youth activism and advocacy, abortion access and funding, and the 2012 elections, among other topics. Missed attending in person? Not to worry -- video footage of this exciting event is now available online. Check it out!
In addition to planning much needed events like the one above, Choice USA has also recently partnered with RH Reality Check (another Ms. Foundation grantee) to cultivate an intergenerational op-ed series on reproductive justice. The series aims to engage young activists and more established members of the movement in an ongoing dialogue to broaden the base of support and lift up the voices and leadership of youth. “We have realized that we as a movement need to figure out successful ways to work together across generations in order to be sustainable and garner bigger wins,” says Kierra Johnson, ED of Choice USA. The series' first installment, "From Generation Roe to Generation Now,” written by Andrew Jenkins, is up on RH Reality Check now.
An article on MSNBC.com about women and the economy featured expert analysis from grantees the National Women’s Law Center and Wider Opportunities for Women. The piece, “After 'mancession,' women falling behind,” highlights the much ignored fact that as the economy improves, women remain at a disadvantage when it comes to finding jobs, gaining back just 1 in 10 of the jobs added to the economy in 2010 -- despite having lost 1 in 3 jobs in 2008/2009. “The whole idea of this ‘mancession’ has always been so interesting because it is definitely true that we saw huge job losses in the [male-dominated] building trades … but it never meant that women were doing well,” Mary Gatta of WOW told MSNBC.Learn more about how WOW partnered with another Ms. Foundation grantee, Moore Community House, to help women in the Gulf Coast weather the economic crisis by accessing quality jobs in construction.
