"Our grantmaking is focused on solutions.
We are solution-driven and action-oriented."
Hilda Pang Fu, Board Chair
In order to achieve systemic change WGF makes programmatic grants for projects aimed at remedying root causes and seeding long-term equity for women and girls in the region. Below are some stories illustrating the work of some past grantees. Please click here for a full list of past grantees. Below are some stories illustrating the work of two past grantees.
Lydia’s Place
Lydia’s Place requested funding from WGF to improve the medical care, and nutrition of pregnant women who are incarcerated in our local prisons. One of their chief concerns and goals was to put an end to the barbaric practice of sheriff deputy’s shackling female prisoners to their hospital beds during labor. WGF’s grant provided Lydia’s Place with the financial support to advocate to the warden and within the prison system for prisoners’ rights. In addition to advocating to prison administrators for systemic change – WGF helped connect Lydia’s Place to the media in order to receive media coverage on the shackling issue. This connection led to the publication of two front page articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about shackling of pregnant inmates. This sudden public attention to the issue – got people thinking and talking and generated a powerful impetus to persuade the local sheriff’s office to change the shackling policy.
“With support from WGF, we have learned that it is truly important to not just complain about bad public policy and the mistreatment of at-risk populations, but to act to change these adverse situations.”
– Vicki Sirockman, Executive Director, Lydia’s Place.
PowerLink
PowerLink used grant funds from WGF to create their new Protégé program. Protégé pairs small or newer women business owners to larger or more established female business owners and their PowerLink advisory boards for a year of “shadowing” and learning. The program also provides a classic analysis of company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by PowerLink advisors for the new business owner and then these advisors help the business owner create an Action Plan to be executed over a 6 month period. The program is intended to be affordable and powerful for the small business owner. The Protégé program has allowed PowerLink to expand its presence and impact in the community to serve women business owners at every stage of business.
“If we are creative in using our resources and harnessing the abilities of our volunteers, we can continue to develop new services to meet the wide variety of needs women business owners have.”
– Deborah Moses, Executive Director, PowerLink
Run Baby Run
In 2004, Gloria Forouzan, and her company Percolator were offering Run, Baby, Run candidate training programs to get more young people to think about running for office. When she met with WGF we talked about how we would like to challenge her to host a Run, Baby, Run workshop that was targeted and which served only women. Gloria was intrigued and she joined with Cecilia Griffin Golden at the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh to make this idea a reality. Together, Gloria and the YWCA applied to WGF to support the first ever – Run, Baby, Run workshop marketed exclusively to women. In particular, the workshop was intended to encourage women of color to attend and consider running for elected office.
Fifty women attended the workshop which ended up starting an entire local political movement. A few months after the workshop, the Run-Baby-Run initiative was born. It would become a non-
partisan coalition of women from diverse professional backgrounds, providing strategic, technical, and fundraising support to women interested in running for the State House in Pennsylvania. As a result of this initiatives efforts there was a 300% increase in the number of women running in the May 2006 primaries (compared with the 2004 primaries in Allegheny County). And come November, we expect that Allegheny County will finally have at least one woman state representative.
Please click here for a full list of past grantees.
Last Updated: August 2008
