Womens’ Fund Executive Committee Meeting Dates 2009-2010

Womens’ Fund Executive Committee,

We are looking forward to an exciting year – our tenth year of learning about the issues that affect women and girls and making grants to address them.

And shaping the policies and programs that guide our Fund when we meet together.

Please calendar the following dates for Executive Committee meetings this year.

All meetings will be held from noon to 2:00 PM in West Newton, either at Mayyim Hayyim or Temple Reyim, as their schedules permit.

Detailed agendas will be emailed a week before the meetings.

• September 30
• December 9
• February 24
• May 5

Many thanks, Susan

BJCWF 2009 Opening Event Annoucement

When do you tell your mother that it’s time to stop driving? Or your father that he shouldn’t live on his own anymore? How involved should you be in your parents’ finances? How do you manage these difficult conversations? These are just some of the thorny issues facing older people and their families.

As we start our tenth year as grant makers, our Women’s Fund is focusing on learning…..about issues and grantees.

Elder issues may not be sexy, but they’re important to the well-being of millions of families. Historically, our Fund has not awarded many grant dollars to this critical area. This is a good time to tackle a meaningful discussion about another tough social issue (remember domestic violence and trafficking?).

On Thursday, September 10 at 7:30 PM, we’ll hold our opening meeting at Golda Meir House, a unit of Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly (JCHE), and a 2009-2010 Women’s Fund grantee for a program that addresses some mental health issues faced by seniors. JCHE President Ellen Feingold will keynote with discussion to follow.

Fund Co-Chairs Margo Newman, Carol Targum and Barbara Schultz will be in touch this week to invite you to join them for dinner before the event.

Please RSVP to Susane@cjp.org to let us know that you will join us for the first step in this year of learning.

NYT Special Report: Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time

The Sunday New York Times Magazine from 8/17/09 leads with an article entitled "Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time." The issue is filled with important and sobering reading, highlighting issues that are of concern to us all.

It starts off...:

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.

You can read the article in it's entirety by clicking here.
My best to you all,

Susan