Boston Women’s Fund at a meeting (on the night of June 11, 2013) of the Board of Directors voted to award $300,000 (for fiscal year 2014) to 21 grassroots organizations led by women and/or girls in Massachusetts. Help us award more money to these incredible groups by donating to the Boston Women’s Fund. Please click on the “Donate” button and make a difference in the lives of the people who struggle to create better communities.
Category Archives: Grantees
Grantees at the Holiday Open House
A former board member with grantee representatives from Centro Presente and the Chelsea Collaborative.
The Genki Spark Celebrates Women’s History Month!
Co-sponsored by: The Boston Women’s Fund, ASPIRE, and Simmons College
Saturday March 24, 2012, 6:00pm – 8:00pm (doors open at 5pm)
Everyone is warmly welcome to come honor and celebrate ALL women and girls GENKI-style! Join us as we celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day with a variety show, featuring original spoken word pieces, dynamic song and dance, and of course, powerful taiko drumming.
Chelsea Collaborative Fighting Environmental Injustice
The Boston Women’s Fund has been a long-time supporter of the Chelsea Collaborative’s City-wide Tenants Association. In working with the Collaborative, we were recently informed about some other important work they are doing in the community. The Chelsea Collaborative is working on an important issue to fight the transport of dangerous ethanol through their community. Global Oil located in Revere, MA is proposing to bring freight trains carrying ethanol to their facilities along the Chelsea River. Ethanol is an alcohol that is mixed with gasoline for sale to gas stations and is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid that burns at extremely high temperatures. Alcohol-resistant foam is necessary to extinguish ethanol fires along with specially trained fire-fighters. Continue reading Chelsea Collaborative Fighting Environmental Injustice
The Desegregation of Boston’s Public Housing and Why Organizing is Necessary
I recently had the opportunity to visit with one of the Boston Women’s Fund’s grantees, South Boston en Acción (SBEA). SBEA organizes and develops the leadership of the Latina residents of living in South Boston’s public housing developments. The Latino population in South Boston has grown significantly and rapidly, and Latinos are the largest ethnic group residing in the South Boston public housing developments. SBEA grew out of an ad-hoc group of women who began meeting sporadically in 2004 to talk about family concerns. Many of these concerns resulted from the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) settlement of Latino families in a neighborhood where they encountered linguistic and cultural barriers and experienced social isolation. In 2007, SBEA received a 3-year grant from the Hyams Foundation that led to weekly meetings, the opening of an office, and non-profit incorporation.
I was very impressed with all that South Boston en Acción has accomplished in its short lifetime, particularly given the history of racism in South Boston. It made me eager to learn more about the history of racism and desegregation in Boston’s public housing. Although, among my colleagues there existed first-hand knowledge of the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools, we did not have in depth knowledge on the desegregation of public housing. I did some online research and talked to Kathy Brown of the Boston Tenant Coalition and Edna Carrasco of the Committee for Boston Public Housing.
Continue reading The Desegregation of Boston’s Public Housing and Why Organizing is Necessary
Boston Women’s Fund Brings Social Justice Community Together at Holiday Open House
The Boston Women’s Fund, on Thursday, held its first annual Holiday Open House, bringing together some of the hardest working members of the grassroots and social justice community.
Continue reading Boston Women’s Fund Brings Social Justice Community Together at Holiday Open House
Congratulations to Nancy Luc from our grantee organization MassCOSH
Nancy is the recipient of the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship “Red Wagon” Award. The Red Wagon Award is an award given annually by the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship in recognition of the individual who demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to the 5 Promises through their leadership and service to the youth of Massachusetts.
At the 4th Annual Pass the Wagon Alumni Celebration & Fundraiser on Friday, December 2nd, 2011, the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship will present the Annual Red Wagon Award to Nancy Luc, Class VII & VIII Fellow Alum, and current Fellow supervisor!
Congratulations from the Boston Women’s Fund as well.
Organizing Institute’s Fall Making the Case Training
On Wednesday, October 26th, The Boston Women’s Fund’s Organizing Institute held its Fall Making the Case Training. 18 out of 20 of our grantee organizations met with Josefina Vazquez, Executive Director and Amy Leung, Program Officer to learn how to use our evaluation system.
Continue reading Organizing Institute’s Fall Making the Case Training
Opportunity to Support Grassroots Grantees
Within a period of less than thirty years, the Fund awarded 5 million dollars in grants.
This fiscal year, our grantee pool included the work of some newer organizations in line with our core values. The Fund invited seven new projects, welcomed back a grassroots hip-hop group, and maintained its ongoing support for twelve long-standing women’s grassroots organizations.
With a sum of 20 grantees and total funds of $350,000, the Fund remains exceptionally proud of its support for women and girls-led efforts which includes new initiatives—all thanks to your involvement and contributions. Within a period of less than thirty years, the Boston Women’s Fund awarded 5 million dollars in grants. This makes us tremendously impressed and humbled by your enduring support.
Scores of remarkable women and girls-led community based organizations work tirelessly to increase the effectiveness of women and girls across the board. Here at the Fund, we work with those organizations to facilitate the gap between individual donor support and grassroots work in action. Project HIP-HOP, for instance, links artful youth expression with political organizing, while the Brazilian Immigrant Center works with their community and collectively acts as a unanimous voice to promote the rights of immigrant workers in the area. Organizations like MassCOSH, The Network/La Red and WILD are among the grassroots organizations that we have steadily funded over the years, based on their powerful work in the constant pursuit of racial, economic and social justice.
Other FY2012 grantees, such as Gedinka, Inc, the Mystic Learning Center, and the Genki Spark are organizations that received first-time funding. These grassroots initiatives seek social change through time-tested community organizing, workforce development, and educational advocacy. ¿Oíste?, for example, provides civic engagement training and leadership development techniques by and to low-income Latina women interested in taking a role in policy work. These women go through 12-week workshops that address the systemic issues Latina women experience in relation to domestic violence and health disparities. Following the workshops, the women gain fundamental skills to initiate policy work and to develop local social change campaigns around key community-related issues. Through its organizing project, the Brazilian Immigrant Center recognizes the link between domestic work and immigrant women of color, while it organizes around the passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. These last two organizations stand with our other grantees working around the clock to address the injustices that affect many socially and economically marginalized communities in Massachusetts.
The Fund proudly supports projects that work in unison with women and girls in strengthening the viability of grassroots communities and applying strategic techniques to establish long-term, systemic social change. We welcome you in choosing the opportunity to invest in women’s and girls’ grassroots work. Ultimately, your investment assures systemic social change in many arenas. Our success, and the success of our grantee organizations, relies on your philanthropy and dedication to assuring all women live with rights and resources that sustain their commitment for realizing racial, economic and social justice for the whole community.
“Making The Case” Our Fall training session is part of our Organizing Institute.
Making The Case is the evaluation tool used by the BWF Grantees to measure their impact and the Organizing Institute is our technical training arm for assuring that both BWF and the grantee community utilize best practices.