Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga

Grant making: the Women's Fund's collective philanthropy arm, the nightingale network, awarded $10,000 to Chattanooga room in the inn's shelter to stability program. The program provides a safe and supportive place for homeless women and children to live, along with resources needed to move toward stability and to find permanent, safe housing. The ultimate goal of the program is for women and children to never be homeless again. We also granted $3,640 to both the chambliss center for children and signal centers' family forward program 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 bills. We continued our comprehensive work to improve the status of women and girls in Tennessee. 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. Our bill to add economic abuse to the Tennessee code for domestic violence was passed. We saw successes with important pieces of legislation such as advances in confidentiality for human trafficking survivors. We held a day on the hill to nashiville, transporting women and girls from our area to nashville to engage in the legislative process and meet legislators. We conducted a period product drive to stock the local school districts care closets at schools across the district as part of our period poverty awareness work and provided an eductional webinar on menstrual health.

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, beginning to plan our next campaign.