Grant-Making Impact
Response
Empowering Chicago-area Jewish Girls
Founded on the premise that early intervention and prevention are key to helping pre-teen girls make healthy decisions, Girls Speak Up is a new program to assist 5th- and 6th-graders in dealing with body image, stress management, peer pressure, bullying and conflict resolution.
Developed by Jewish women and girls who are parents, teachers, administrators and students at Chicago Jewish day schools, Girl Speak Up seeks to build resilience in girls in the Jewish community through reinforcement of positive attitudes and beliefs, within the structure of religious life.
Five sessions of the program will be offered in 2011 at local Jewish day schools, engaging an aggregate of 70-75 girls in interactive workshops with their peers. Facilitated by a Response clinician and an art therapist, each six-part sequence of workshops will focus on healthy relationships, positive communication, conflict resolution, and valuing and accepting one’s body.
Every session offers positive coping mechanisms to better enable them to negotiate the demands of their daily lives, reduce stress, communicate more effectively, take responsibility for their own lives and achieve a greater understanding of themselves and others.
For additional information on Response, please visit www.responsecenter.org
Shalom Bait (“Peace in the Home”):
Helping to Break the Cycle of Violence Against Women in Latin America
After a decade of brutal beatings by her husband, “Lisbeth,” a young Jewish mother living in Buenos Aires, turned to Shalom Bait, a Jewish non-profit fighting domestic abuse. Though Argentina is home to a Jewish community of 250,000, Shalom Bait is the only organization of its kind in the region, serving both Jewish Argentinean women and Jewish women in neighboring countries.
Shalom Bait offers desperately needed legal assistance to women in the process of leaving an abusive relationship. With the help of Shalom Bait’s corps of volunteer lawyers and counselors, Lisbeth was able to free herself and her children from this violent household, winning a divorce and filing for child support.
Although the organization has helped hundreds of individual women over the years, Shalom Bait understands that creating safe and healthy homes requires more than one-on-one assistance. Through comprehensive community education, professional trainings and legislative advocacy, Shalom Bait has been instrumental in passing some of Argentina’s first domestic violence laws and bringing about social change and institutional reform.
For more inforamtion on Shalom Bait, please visit www.shalombait.org.ar
Economic Empowerment for Women
Training for Micro Entrepreneurs
Economic independence leads to success in all areas of life. To this end, JWF has long supported Economic Empowerment for Women, a nonprofit in Israel devoted to providing low-income Israeli women of all backgrounds with knowledge, training and tools to create small businesses and break out of the cycle of poverty.
This entrepreneurial training has done more than provide income; it has helped hundreds of women rediscover their individual potential, build self-esteem and grow into community leaders.
Since its inception, Economic Empowerment for Women has played an active role in the establishment and growth of 800 small businesses, changing women’s lives for the better. Program graduates saw their average household income increase by 20% over a three-year period, in comparison to the national average increase of 1.8%. So empowered, hundreds of Israeli women lifted themselves and their families above the poverty line.
Additional Success Stories
- "In the Family," a film supported by a grant from the JWF, explores the hard choices that come with genetic knowledge.
- Building healthy futures: JWF provides funding to MaTan - Allied Health Professionals Program
- Protecting employment rights of women: JWF provides funding to Yedid
- FSU Jewish women take women's case to U.N., D.C.: JWF supports Project Kesher's work in the FSU
