Women's Health Archives

Celebrate Dignity for All with #PledgeYourPeriod

At first, Megha Desai thought there was no way girls and women would take to social media to tell stories about their first periods. But as education, dignity, and confidence grew in a small town in India, the local women and girls surprised her.

*Megha Desai, President of the Desai Foundation. (Image Credit: Desai Foundation)*

Four years ago, the Desai Foundation held an awareness campaign about menstrual health and hygiene in the small town of Untdi, Gujarat–the village Desai’s father grew up in.

“We had all these signs laid out on tables, saying things like ‘Happy to Bleed,’ ‘Proud to be a Woman,’ and ‘Proud of my Womanhood,” remembers Desai, President of the Desai Foundation. “I looked at those signs and I thought, ‘Nobody is going to hold these signs up. We’re in a tiny little village where no woman would talk about her period. But by the end of the campaign, the women and girls were so confident and proud that they posed for pictures with these signs. It blew me away. I thought to myself, if these girls in this little village can hold these signs and pledge their periods, then we ought to be able to do that, too.”

Gates Leaders on COVID: Liveblogging New IUPUI Series

On May 21st, attendees gathered for IUPUI’s first webinar in the Perspectives on Philanthropy Discussion Series. The series asks, “As we search for context in our transforming world, what role does philanthropy play? Broadly understood to encompass the human voluntary spirit, philanthropy is responding in a variety of ways to the current global crisis today. How is it doing and what role will it have in the world that is emerging?”

Today’s webinar started with an introduction from Amir Pasic of IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The morning’s guests were Jennifer Alcorn (Deputy Director, Philanthropic Partnerships) and Victoria Vrana (Deputy Director, Giving By All) of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Frances Sykes: Women in Nonprofit Leadership Deserve Equal Pay

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Frances Sykes, President of the Pascale Sykes Foundation. The Foundation partners with nonprofits that serve working, low income families to increase their stability — financially, in relationships and in well-being.

Frances P. Sykes is the President of the Pascale Sykes Foundation, which serves working, low-income families. (Image Credit: Pascale Sykes Foundation)

“Hope is setting a goal and moving toward that goal, taking steps toward the future. That’s what gets families and individuals through challenges of daily life and makes a difference in the community.” – Frances Sykes, President and CEO, Pascale Sykes Foundation

Influential Women Show Solidarity for DV Survivors in COVID

Reese Witherspoon, Octavia Spencer, Megan Rapinoe, Iman, Sheryl Sandberg, America Ferrera, Jennifer Garner, Michelle Pfeiffer, Amy Schumer, Awkwafina, Viola Davis, Mariska Hargitay, Patty Jenkins and More Pledge Support and Funds

LOS ANGELES, May 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — According to The United Nations Population Fund, six months of lockdowns could result in an additional 31 million cases of gender-based violence across the globe. The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP), CARE, and the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) launched Together For Her last month to deploy funds, address the dire need for resources, and support the global response against domestic violence amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grantmakers for Girls of Color Gives One Million for COVID-19

The Love Is Healing COVID-19 Response Fund is providing one million dollars in grants to resource organizations and efforts addressing the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls, fem(mes), and nonbinary/gender expansive youth of color. The grant-making initiative represents Grantmakers for Girls of Color’s first grantmaking effort as an independent entity.

(Photo Credit:) *Credit: Grantmakers for Girls of Color*

Monique W. Morris, Ed.D., newly appointed executive director of Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4CC), notes, “In this moment and beyond, philanthropy must address the lack of diversity, quality, and responsiveness of capital directed to support girls of color at the intersection of their complex identities and experiences.” Morris adds, “Even before this pandemic, girls and gender expansive youth of color have faced interlocking forms of oppression that prevent their full participation in our country’s future.”

May 14 Webinar: Feminist Giving for COVID: Strategies and Models

What can feminist giving do to help alleviate the COVID-19 crisis?

We’re seeking to answer this question in “Feminist Giving for COVID: Strategies and Models,” the first ever webinar event from Philanthropy Women. Join Editor-in-Chief Kiersten Marek and special guests Marianne Schnall, Surina Khan, and Emily Nielsen Jones to discuss key strategies to support women and girls through COVID.

COVID 19 is presenting humanity with extreme challenges and hardships, and particularly for women and girls, the impacts are, and will be, profound. This 45 minute session will feature expert insights on how to apply a gender lens not only to your funding, but also to your everyday life in COVID, in order to improve our collective response to this unprecedented health crisis.

New Report Shows How Comfortable Harvard Made Jeffrey Epstein

Time for a break from COVID and a return to a discussion that was a big deal in the land before pandemics: Jeffrey Epstein, and the way he simply glided through high society as if there was nothing wrong with being a convicted sex offender.

*Harvard University’s General Counsel, in consultation with an outside law firm, has produced a 27 page report on Epstein’s involvement with the university. (Image Credit: Boston Globe)* Read the full report here.

A new report from Harvard discussed in today’s Boston Globe tells of how Epstein “had his own office in a Harvard University department and visited there more than 40 times after he was released from jail in 2010 up until 2018.”

Shifting From Conflict to Connection During COVID

I: An Opportunity for Connection and Transformation

Second wave feminism, building on the accomplishments of the first wave suffrage movement, proclaimed that gender equality and justice should be the ethic of every culture in the world. In the tragedy of Covid-19, many of us are quarantined at home with our spouses, partners, and families. What my husband, Harville, and I are doing at this time is distributing a process called Safe Conversations which fosters mutual respect and equality. We hope to bring as many people as possible into the community of Safe Conversation and offer it as an opportunity to transform our domestic relationships and help actualize this feminist vision.

from conflict to connection — Helen LaKelly Hunt shares about how Safe Conversations can help families stay connected during COVID. (Image credit: Tim Mossholder at Unsplash)

For the first time in history of the world, the relational sciences are teachable due to advances in neurosciences in the 1990s. Safe Conversations allows anyone in a relationship to shift from judgement to curiosity, from conflict to connection, and from criticism to wonder.

Addressing COVID DV Surge: NNEDV Teams with Donors, Shelters

Cindy Southworth knows how it feels to be at the center of the fire. As the Executive Vice President for the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), Southworth has found herself, like many nonprofit and crisis aid workers, pivoting almost daily to meet the needs of victims of domestic violence around the country.

Speaking to Women Moving Millions during a webinar session in early April, Southworth laid out the organization’s mission, as well as the deep plea for help from domestic violence organizations around the country.

“We want to get the message out that domestic violence shelters are still open,” she says. “What we’re all working to do is create a world where the idea of domestic violence no longer exists, where it doesn’t even seem fathomable that somebody would use violence and control to harm their partner. And in the meantime, we want to make sure that, until we create that new world with different gender norms and different social and cultural expectations, that we are serving every single survivor who needs and wants to reach out for help.”

Sustainable Solutions: Debbie Chang on Blue Shield of CA Foundation

During a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, Debbie Chang’s instructor showed a picture of a tractor in the middle of a field in Africa. Rusted away, with weeds growing through its seat and tires, the tractor stood forgotten and ignored, the last remnants of some well-intentioned but badly thought out campaign for change.

“The point was that you can’t force social change upon people,” Chang says. “It may work in America, but it won’t work in Africa. It really made me think about how you can’t solve problems in a top-down model. You’ve got to focus on the local people and their culture, and solve problems with the community, not for the community.”

Category: Women’s Health