Author: Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

Women in Poverty: The Untold Story.

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to record a commentary for NPR regarding the release of new census data showing that 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year.

While the official press release stated that there was no statistical change in the poverty rate for female-headed families, the reality is that 4.2 million such families are impoverished. 

That means that nearly a third of all female-headed households live in poverty—a number that shoots up to 40 percent for black and Hispanic families headed by single mothers.

The statistics are staggering when you consider that:

  • A fifth of all girls are poor;
  • 13 percent of adult women live in poverty;
  • Almost twice as many elderly women as elderly men are impoverished;
  • Real earnings for women dropped 2 percent to $35,745, compared with a 1 percent decline for men to $46,367;
  • The unemployment rate for female-headed families is 12.2 percent, compared to 7.1 percent for married men; and,
  • 43.5 percent of children living in female-headed households are poor, compared to 9.9 percent of children living in married couple households.

Despite what should be jaw-dropping statistics, few in the mainstream media have talked about the female face of poverty today.

There is an untold story not only in the numbers themselves, but also in what’s behind the numbers.

It is the story of the millions of women who face insurmountable odds and yet every day, bit-by-bit, they are working to beat those odds and create a better life for themselves and their children.

They are women like Lee, a single mother who fled domestic violence and entered a shelter program with her 5-year-old son. She secured a job with a local retail store and through the shelter received financial education to develop a budget and begin restoring her credit. She worked to relieve medical debt totaling $2,211.  As a result of free tax preparation services, she received a $3,640 refund that was used to further pay down debt and deposit more than $2,000 in her savings account. She is now taking placement tests toward pursuing a degree in emergency medical services.

While Washington Area Women’s Foundation is very proud of the work we’re doing to improve the lives of women like Lee through our Stepping Stones initiative, we know that it’s not enough.

In his final letter to President Obama, the late Senator Edward Kennedy referred to health care reform as “above all a moral issue.”

I would argue that reducing poverty among women and their children is also a moral issue and that everyone needs to be part of the solution.

What will you do?

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is The Women’s Foundation’s Vice President of Programs.

$1.1 million in grants: We couldn't do it without you!

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

Have you ever noticed that when someone wins a Grammy or an Oscar, they always thank the myriad of people who have supported them along the way?  Sometimes they go on a bit too long and the music begins to play, but they almost always utter, “I just want to thank my mom.”

Well, that’s how I’m feeling this week.

We’ve just announced that The Women’s Foundation hit our goal of granting $1.1 million this year to organizations working to improve the lives of women and girls—a major milestone in this economy.

And we certainly didn’t do it alone!

There are countless individuals, organizations, foundations, and corporations who helped us along the way.

So here are my thank you’s (and please don’t play the music until I finish):

  • Our donors, who fuel this important work and enable us to make our dreams a reality;
  • Our volunteers, who spent hours of their time reading proposals, conducting site visits and agonizing over the final decisions;
  • Our current and former board members, who have extraordinary vision and commitment to our mission;
  • Our staff, who poured over hundreds of proposals and had the difficult task of sometimes saying no;
  • Our Grantee Partners, who are on the frontlines every day striving to improve the lives of women and girls; and,
  • Of course, my mother, who inspires me each and every day.

Thank you!  We couldn’t do it without you!

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is The Women’s Foundation’s Vice President, Programs.

We're celebrating $1.1 million in grantmaking this year!

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

As school lets out for the summer, there are many proud moments to celebrate, whether it’s a graduation milestone, a decent report card or the beginning of something new.

Here at The Women’s Foundation, we’re celebrating meeting an ambitious goal: maintaining our grantmaking as we close out the fiscal year!  With our most recent approval of grants, we hit our goal of granting $1.1 million to nonprofits working to improve the lives of women and girls in our region.

Our Stepping Stones grants support critical work in the areas of financial education, job training and early care and education, all of which provide the essential tools and support needed to assist low-income women and their families during these tough economic times.

Organizations like Community Tax Aid, Doorways for Women and Families, and Manna, Inc. will continue their work with low-income, women-headed families by providing them with the financial education and tax prep assistance needed to start them on a path of economic success.

SOME and Year Up are providing the job training that is essential to putting women on a career pathway.

Food stamps are an important work support and play a critical role in moving a women and her family out of poverty.  DC Hunger Solutions will continue its advocacy work to ensure that eligible women and their children are receiving food stamps.

Another key work support is access to quality child care. Montgomery College Foundation, Prince George’s Child Resource Center and WETA will work to improve the quality of early care and education.

Now more than ever, nonprofit organizations face a myriad of challenges and navigating complex systems can be overwhelming. The Human Services Coalition of Prince George’s County will work to improve public policies so they enhance, rather than hinder, the effectiveness of the work nonprofits do on behalf of low-income, women-headed families in Prince George’s County.

Through our Open Door Capacity Fund, we’re funding capacity building work that aims to shore up the long-term sustainability of organizations. This work is essential to ensuring that these organizations have the necessary resources to address key organizational and operational improvements, while maintaining the much-needed services they provide to our region’s at-risk women and girls.

Please take a moment to review our most recent grants and take pride knowing that together we’re making a difference in the lives of women and girls in our community.

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is the Vice President, Programs at The Women’s Foundation.

Shift in Open Door Capacity Fund signals focus on sustainability.

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

You’ve seen the headlines. You’ve watched the stock market drop.  You’re well aware that the country is in a recession and our economy is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression.

Additionally, late last year, analysts predicted that more than 100,000 nonprofits nationwide could close over the next two years.  Many have asked: What does this mean for our region’s nonprofits.

The Women’s Foundation is asking: What does it mean for our Grantee Partners?

The Women’s Foundation has spent considerable time thinking about that question and asking ourselves what role we could play in helping our Grantee Partners remain sustainable over the course of this downturn. 

First, we looked internally and confronted our own long-term sustainability.  Remaining 100 percent committed to maintaining our grantmaking this year, we made several difficult decisions. 

In December, our President Phyllis Caldwell announced the first of these decisions—postponing an office expansion, saying, “This is a time when strategy, smart investing and sacrifice are going to be required of foundations, just as they are of individuals, to ensure that the impact of our giving is as meaningful as possible.”

Further sacrifice came in January, when The Women’s Foundation made the difficult decision to eliminate two staff positions. 

At the same time, we meticulously examined operating expenses and made further strategic cuts, including reexamining the costs incurred as a result of meeting space and food.  Lastly, cost-sharing mechanisms for employee health benefits were instituted.

Taken together, we believe these decisions will allow us to weather this economic storm and ensure our long-term sustainability.

To that end, now more than ever, we remain focused on our mission to support our region’s nonprofits as they work to change the lives of women and girls.

Many of the organizations we support are small, or just starting to establish themselves.  They have lean staffs and do their programmatic work on a shoestring budget.  Few have the time or resources to step back from the day-to-day grind and think creatively and strategically about what they need to do to shore up their long-term sustainability. 

Our region has demonstrated tremendous leadership in addressing the plight of nonprofits by providing a host of educational, hands-on tools to help “weather the storm.”

The Women’s Foundation is pleased to announce one more tool in this arsenal: a funding opportunity that will provide our Grantee Partners the time and the resources to undertake sustainability planning. 

Today, we released a request for proposals (RFP) through our Open Door Capacity Fund.  This RFP, open to the majority of our Grantee Partners, seeks to fund sustainability planning and activities and is designed to encourage our Grantee Partners to think outside of the box and ask themselves: How do we make it through a recession and poise ourselves for recovery?

It is our hope that not only will this focus on sustainability help our Grantee Partners to continue to do the critical work they’re doing for our region’s women and girls, but that it may also serve as a model to other funders throughout our region and the nation, and that together, we’ll be able to help turn this challenging time into an opportunity to make the nonprofit sector–and the work it does on behalf of our communities–stronger and more effective than ever.

What are you doing differently to ensure your sustainability?

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is The Women’s Foundation’s Vice President, Programs.

Giving circle's example should inspire greater action on behalf of policymakers.

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

Imagine my delight yesterday at opening the Washington Post to see a front page article on our African American Women’s Giving Circle. The title of the article said it all, “A Circle With a Deep Center: Black Women Pool Resources in Grass-Roots Effort to Alleviate D.C.’s Social Ills.”

Unfortunately, my delight was tempered upon noticing the article printed just above it, which detailed the Bush Administration’s most recent attempt to limit women’s access to birth control.

An interesting juxtaposition—local women joining together to support organizations providing health care to disenfranchised communities in Southeast D.C., right next to federal efforts to further limit access to health care, particularly for the underserved.

And we wonder why we’re not making headway on health care in the United States?

Earlier in the week, there was an article contrasting federal support for HIV/AIDS programs globally and domestically. According to the article, the District of Columbia has the highest prevalence of HIV infection of any jurisdiction in the U.S. at about 1 in every 20 residents. The DC Department of Health states that women account for nearly one-third of all newly reported HIV/AIDS cases, with African American women accounting for the majority (9 out of 10).

Similarly, a women’s health report card published by the National Women’s Law Center gave D.C. a failing grade in its efforts to meet the health care needs of women. The neighboring jurisdictions of Maryland and Virginia did not fare much better, both receiving unsatisfactory grades.

I am truly inspired by the efforts of the African American Women’s Giving Circle because together they are making critical investments to improve the lives of women and girls in D.C. where others have turned a blind eye.

However, it is disheartening to think that their efforts are not fully supported on a much larger scale by our government, policymakers and other key decision makers, who have the ability to truly enact widespread change and to make  a systematic difference in the lives of women and girls and their health and well-being. 

Because, in the end, it truly does take a village.

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is a program officer at The Women’s Foundation, responsible for grantmaking in the realm of health and safety.  She has more than a decade of experience as a policy advocate on reproductive health issues impacting the low-income and uninsured.

Kids' class project parallels grown-up challenges facing families living in poverty.

Posted on by Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat

With only two weeks left in the school year, yesterday my daughter’s third grade class in Fairfax County began week one of their Cities program.  Now, you might be wondering what the Cities program is. 

I asked myself that same question when my daughter began excitedly telling me about it.  The more I learned, the more intrigued I became.

Essentially, each third grade class is turned into a “city” for a few hours a day.  My daughter now resides in “Cougar County” and was both thrilled and concerned to learn that she would receive a 100 Zapper (equivalent to the dollar) loan from the mayor to begin her residency in Cougar County, but would have to pay back the loan at the end of the two weeks.  She received a check book and quickly learned how to write checks, make deposits in the Green Place Bank, and balance her checkbook.

There were many decisions that needed to be made.

First, which job would she apply for? She carefully weighed her options: mayor’s assistant, banker, police officer, maintenance, newspaper editor, government, or private sector. She opted for the private sector and decided she wanted to be an entrepreneur (much to the chagrin of her dad, a lifelong bureaucrat).

Her second decision: how much to charge for her products? As an entrepreneur, she was required to submit a project proposal to be approved by the mayor. She carefully calculated her supply fees (20 Zappers per week) and rental fees (10 Zappers per week) to assist her in determining the price of her products (homemade clay animals and friendship rings—absolutely worth every Zapper if you ask her very unbiased mom).

Third decision: should she purchase the optional health insurance and optional business insurance at 10 Zappers per policy per week? 

This is where she hit her stumbling block.

The mayor informed the citizens that each day a medical disaster or a business disaster would randomly hit one citizen.  The cost if you were not insured—250 Zappers.

Lengthy discussions ensued as she weighed the decision.  What if she couldn’t sell enough of her products to pay for the supply and rental fees?  Would she have any Zappers to shop in Cougar County?  Could she repay the 100 Zapper loan?  How could she afford the insurance if her products didn’t sell?  How could she afford to pay 250 Zappers if she was uninsured and hit by a disaster?

While the scenario my daughter faces in Cougar County is merely a third grade lesson plan, unfortunately, it is a stark reality for thousands of women and their families in the Washington metropolitan area.

According to The Portrait Project, low-income, women-headed families are the most economically vulnerable population in the Washington metropolitan area–57 percent of families living in poverty in the region are women-headed households. 

They are living one paycheck, one car repair, or one medical crisis away from disaster.

A recent report from the Urban Institute stated, “Savings and assets can cushion families against sudden income loss, increase economic independence, and bolster long-term economic gains.”  And yet, 24 percent of low-income families do not hold bank accounts, 35 percent do not own cars, 90 percent have no retirement account, and 60 percent do not own homes, leaving them with nothing to fall back on when hard times hit.

We’ve all seen the recent headlines, “Rising Prices Hit Home for Food Stamp Recipients,” “Jobless Claims Jump 25 Percent from ’07 in N. Va,” “Economic Troubles Multiply Requests for Help in DC Area.”

Gas and food are at record prices. Foreclosures are increasing. Unemployment rates have reached new highs. By all accounts, hard times are here.

So then, what does it mean to be one step away from a financial crisis?

To get a better sense of what it takes to truly survive economically in the Washington metropolitan area, I consulted the Family Economic Self-Sufficiency (FESS) Standard, a tool created by one of our Grantee Partners, Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW).  The standard “estimates the level of income necessary for a given family type—whether working now or making the transition to work—to be independent of welfare and/or other public and private subsidies.”

You might be surprised to learn that according to WOW, the 2005 self-sufficiency standard for a single mother with an infant and a preschooler living in D.C. was $53,634. That’s what it would take to cover the family’s basic needs (housing, child care, transportation, food, health care, miscellaneous expenses, and taxes). 

Compare that to the federal poverty guidelines, which calculate the poverty level for a family of three at $16,090. If that same mother works full-time making minimum wage in Washington, DC, she would earn just $19,322.

If you earn 36 percent of what is necessary to provide for your family’s basic needs, what exactly constitutes “hard times”?  Aren’t you already there?

As my daughter struggled to make her decisions about Cities, I asked her think about this reality.

What would it be like to come home from school to discover she had to move out of the only home she’s ever known and not be sure where she’s going?  What would it be like to live on $1 per meal per day?  What if she had no health insurance and the three trips to the pediatrician that we’ve made in the last two weeks for her bronchitis threw our family into debt?

She had no answers to my questions.

And so when my daughter came home last night, I was anxiously awaiting her final decision. Did she purchase the insurance or did she decide it was simply too expensive?

In the end, she opted to purchase both the health and business insurance.  But, concerned that she wouldn’t be able to pay back her Zappers loan, she stayed up late to make additional clay animals to sell the next morning.

Yes, it’s a simple third grade lesson plan, but imagine if it were real.

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation