Women's Foundation of Minnesota Supports Social Change

The Women's Foundation of Minnesota, Minneapolis, awarded $255,000 in grants throughout Minnesota in November 2004 for efforts to support social change that will improve the state of Minnesota for women and girls.

The grants, which came from the foundation's Social Change Fund, went to 18 nonprofit organizations to support a variety of organizations in four key areas: ending violence, human rights, economic justice and women's health.

Recipients of the foundation's Social Change Fund grants are:

• Association for the Advancement of Hmong Women, Minneapolis, $12,000 in support of the Hmong Women's Health Education and Cancer Prevention Program, which encourages women to take charge of their health by educating Hmong women about traditional and western processes of breast and cervical cancer treatment.
     
• Battered Women's Legal Advocacy Project, Minneapolis, $15,000 to improve the responsiveness of advocates and professionals in Minnesota's law enforcement and legal systems to the needs of women affected by domestic violence, especially rural, Native American and new immigrant women, by providing training seminars for professionals in these institutions and systems.
     
• Casa de Esperanza, St. Paul, $15,000 for the Fuerza Unida program, which mobilizes Latinas to end domestic violence in the Latino community by leading efforts for Latinos to acquire knowledge, information and access to support within their communities.
     
• College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, $20,000 for the SECURE program (Science Education Connecting Unique Research Environments), which will enable graduates to change the way math and science is currently being taught to K-8 students, especially girls, by helping existing and prospective K-8 math, science and technology teachers gain the skills and confidence to be effective science role models and teachers for girls.
     
• Community Resource Alliance, Detroit Lakes, $10,000 for the Young Ones program, which restores respect for the dignity and human rights of Ojibwe women by teaching Native American girls and boys about Ojibwe values and cultural traditions that support Native women and counter negative messages that youth receive from the larger society about violence against women.
    
• Council on Crime and Justice, Minneapolis, $10,000 to improve the criminal justice system's response to victims of domestic violence by disseminating research conducted by the Battered Women's Justice Project that highlights significant differences in levels of services provided to victims of domestic violence in Hennepin County compared to offenders (batterers).
     
• Cultural Diversity Resources, Moorhead, $10,000 to improve the response of the law enforcement system in the Fargo-Moorhead region to the needs of Bosnian, Sudanese, Kurdish, Vietnamese, Somali, Russian, Arabic and Spanish victims of domestic violence through advocacy and cultural mediation.
     
• Girls International Forum, St. Paul, $9,000 to facilitate girls' leadership and planning of an international girls summit, taking place in Minnesota in 2006, to develop a vision of a world that acts in the best interests of and mobilizes girls from around the globe to action.
     
• Inter-Race Institute, Minneapolis, $14,000 for Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Wisdom, a community dialogue and training project to improve relations between African American and Somali immigrant girls and women in the Twin Cities, while, at the same time, reducing denigrating attitudes in the larger society that exacerbate relationships between these two communities.
     
• Macalester College, St. Paul, $5,000 in support of the Lealtad/Suzuki Center for Multicultural Life "Multi-Generational" program, designed to provide role models for young girls of color in the Twin Cities and increase their interest in attending college by facilitating mentoring relationships between women of color students at Macalester and younger girls from Twin Cities' communities of color.
     
• Mama Mosaic, Minneapolis, $13,000 for the theater production of Bride/Price, which connects the stories of immigrant women in the United States with the global struggle to end the oppression of women, and challenges audiences to dismantle behaviors that are the root cause of violence against women.
    
• Pro-Choice Resources/NARAL, Minneapolis/St. Paul, $15,000 in support of the Abortion Provider Expansion Project, which seeks to expand abortion services, especially for low-income women who do not have access to low-cost abortion services, by increasing the pool of medical and surgical abortion providers in Minnesota through education and training of medical students and residents.
     
• Sisters in Harmony Coalition, Minneapolis, $15,000 to advocate for equal treatment of African and African American women with breast and cervical cancer in the broader health care system by culturally supporting women to take charge of their health and encouraging them to hold the health care system accountable for equal treatment.
     
• Southern Sudanese Community, Mankato, $10,000 in support of the Women's Leadership Development Project to empower Sudanese women to play leadership roles in their community, by providing opportunities to learn how to navigate American systems of employment, education and immigration.
       
• TVBYGIRLS, Minneapolis, $5,000 to build the political power of girls through media-inspired projects that reflect their multicultural experiences and provide positive, alternative images of women and girls.
     
• Women's and Families Network, St. Paul, $12,000 to create a seamless, equitable health care system for women, youth and families affected by AIDS by bringing women together across Minnesota to identify gaps in treatment and services that are the result of a system that is geared primarily toward the treatment of gay white men affected by AIDS.
     
• Women's Transitional Housing Coalition, Duluth, $15,000 to provide advocacy education for low-income women who are impacted by recent legislative changes that severely reduce funding for HUD's Section 8 program and MFIP and prevent them from furthering their education.
     
• YWCA of Minneapolis, $15,000 for the Leadership Registry project, which seeks to change the make-up of nonprofit boards in the metro area by identifying and placing 400 women and people of color on nonprofit boards and, at the same time, change the climate of nonprofit boards by providing opportunities for board members to receive training on "unlearning" racism and sexism.

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