Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga

Grant making: the Women's Fund's collective philanthropy arm, the nightingale network awarded $10,000 to girls, inc. of Chattanooga's impact program. The program helps define a sustainable and scalable approach to improving health care quality and delivery by directly engaging 12 to 15 teens in 8th through 12th grade in prevention and education. Impact participants will present their findings to 300 middle and high school students through peer-to-peer advocacy. Through education, peer presentations and conversations between impact members, community teens and healthcare professionals, those involved are learning about their power to positively impact the health of our city and state. We also granted $3,625 to first things first, $3,625 to girl stance, inc. and $525 to Chattanooga free store to support their missions.

Advocacy: the Women's Fund researched issues, wrote legislation, followed the legislative work of the general assembly, created a legislative priority list, and issued calls to action on some bills. We continued our comprehensive work to improve the status of women in Tennessee, focusing our work on the topics highlighted in the institute for Women's policy research publications. Eight of our priority bills passed, and we held off challenges to past gains, such as an attempt to roll back restrictions on child coerced marriage. A few of our bills, including adding economic abuse to the tn code for domestic violence, were pushed to the 2023 session. We saw successes with important pieces of legislation such as anti-shackling of incarcerated pregnant women and breast cancer prevention care. We partnered with a local private all girls school on a period product to stock the local school districts care closets at schools across the district as part of our period poverty awareness work.

Collaboration: continued to work with partners across the state to eliminate the barriers to women and girls. Partners include the Chattanooga mayor's council for women; partnership for families, children and adults; children advocacy center; healthy and free Tennessee; a better balance; and awake Tennessee. We continued the work of the Tennessee Women's Fund alliance, planning our next joint campaign.