Philanthropy Women

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.

Collective Future Fund Announces $2 Mil Fund for Survivors in COVID

COVID-19 is exposing long-standing disparities and inequities created by unjust policies and systems that have left communities vulnerable, in spite of powerful mobilizations by grassroots movements. Millions of people who work in essential care and service industries including homecare workers and house cleaners, restaurant, grocery, and delivery workers, and health and child care providers, are facing risks to their own health, emotional stress, and the economic insecurity that comes with the evolving landscape of managing the coronavirus outbreak.

collective futures fund — The Collective Future Fund has announced the launch of a 2 million fund for survivors during COVID. (Image Credit: Collective Future Fund)

Queer, trans, and cis women of color, Indigenous, and immigrant women and girls in particular make up a significant proportion of the essential workers in our communities showing up day after day to mitigate the transmission and impact of the virus. Even prior to this crisis, they faced widespread discrimination, harassment, and violence in the workplace and have been further marginalized by lack of health benefits or paid sick days, low wages, and job insecurity.

Measurable Pathways to Equity: UNICEF USA’s Cristina Shapiro

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features the President of UNICEF USA’s Impact Fund for Children, Cristina Shapiro.

1. What do you wish you had known when you started out in your profession?

Don’t make perfect the enemy of good — or great. Research shows that women feel like they need to be perfect and fully knowledgeable before they contribute or apply to new opportunities — I certainly did, and it likely held me back at the beginning of my career.

Another thing I wish I realized was that equality and equity are not the same. Though women may have equal rights in many parts of the world, that doesn’t mean they have the same access to opportunities, resulting in significant inequity. As a Hispanic woman in finance, there were very few role models that looked like me. Now, I know it is up to me to help change that dynamic.

Pastoralist Child Fdn Works To Fight COVID in Kenya

The far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 crisis appear as more than just devastating illness. Crop failures, locust swarms, and market shutdowns all combine to put African villages in further peril, and when it comes to fighting these widespread effects, the Pastoralist Child Foundation finds itself on the front lines.

The Pastoralist Child Foundation (PCF) is a nonprofit dedicated to ending female genital mutilation and forced marriages while empowering African women and girls to pursue education and leadership roles in their communities.

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.”

Consortium Providing Relief Grants to Southern Black Women and Girls

Editor’s Note: The following announcement is from the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium:

Black women will, as we always have, look out for the needs of our family, friends, and community.

southern black women — The Black Girl Joy Challenge is providing awards up to $250 for girls and young women ages 12 to 25 who have an idea to spread joy virtually. (Image Credit: SBGWC)

Given the unprecedented turmoil of the COVID-19 outbreak many of us will need extraordinary help to care for our families, maintain our homes, and remind our communities to find joy, even in this.

The Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium (SBGWC) is a collective of funders, activists and community leaders working to advance the movements for Black girls and women in the Deep South. We are offering an immediate funding opportunity to support Black girls and women and the people who rely on them. The SBGWC COVID-19 fund will rapidly deploy resources to organizations that support Black girls and women in the South that may be experiencing financial crisis or uncertainty due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Deborah Cullen-Morales Appointed Program Officer for Arts and Culture

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced the appointment of Deborah Cullen-Morales as the Foundation’s new program officer for Arts and Cultural Heritage. Cullen-Morales will join the Foundation on May 1.

As a program officer, Cullen-Morales will help shape and direct work in the visual arts across a range of grants and research initiatives supporting art museums, cultural heritage preservation, and conservation.

“Having led multiple arts institutions, including museums, university galleries, and artist-run spaces, Deborah brings to the position field-wide perspective, deep appreciation of the central role of artists in shaping arts organizations, and a vast network of relationships with artists, curators, scholars, and cultural leaders,” said Elizabeth Alexander, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. “We are thrilled to welcome Deborah and look forward to working with her.”

How Donors Can Support Survivors of DV During COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic and current isolation at home of the majority of people across the globe has led domestic violence incidents to skyrocket. In Australia, Google reports a 75% increase in online searches for help with domestic violence. In China, the number of calls to helplines has tripled, according to the U.N., and here in the US, police departments and hotlines are reporting a 20%-35% increase in cases. Couple this data with the fact that many shelters nationwide are currently closed or not accepting new clients in order to protect the health and safety of staff and current residents, and the picture of this crisis quickly becomes much bleaker.

However, COVID-19 itself is not the problem. The number one reason survivors in the US stay in or go back to abusive situations is financial insecurity. The Center for Disease Control estimates that domestic violence will cost a female survivor almost $104,000 in medical bills, legal fees, property damages, and other related costs. This six-figure debt is exacerbated by the fact that economic abuse (which can take many forms such as not being allowed to work, having little or no access to cash, and being forced to take on debt through physical threats) occurs in 99% of domestic violence cases. Survivors are trapped in violence because it is overwhelmingly expensive to overcome both the cost of being harmed and the devastatingly intricate impact of being financially abused.