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?
To help community-based organizations in our region respond to the very human challenges behind these numbers, The Women’s Foundation today released a Request for Proposals under the Stepping Stones Initiative.
We hope the work supported by the RFP – through the Financial Education and Wealth Creation Fund and Jobs Fund – will help low-income, women-headed families in our region weather the recession and emerge ready to take best advantage of an eventual recovery.
To respond to the recession, The Women’s Foundation has made several changes to expand the reach of Stepping Stones. Specifically, we:
- Expanded the target population to women-headed families earning between $0-$40,000;
- Widened the scope of work to include projects focused on work supports that help promote job retention (such as transportation) and public benefits that serve as a safety net (such as Food Stamps and Unemployment Insurance);
- Emphasized our intention to deepen our investment in advocacy; and,
- Encouraged strategic collaborations among community-based organizations to work as long and as holistically as possible with the low-income, women-headed families they are serving.
Here at The Women’s Foundation, we are acutely aware that hard times require us to be wise in our investments.
And that’s our commitment – to our donors, to our Grantee Partners, to Stepping Stones participants and to our community.
Click here to download the RFP.
Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.