News / Impact

/ 09.23.19 /

Sharing, learning, and doing: W4W’s summer of investing in women and helping businesses be a force for social good

The air is cooler, the leaves are changing, and we finally have a moment to step back and get a good look at how much we accomplished during Working for Women’s first summer in action. Here’s a wrap-up of what made the last few months so exciting over here:

We launched our first-ever Working for Women video

Our first-ever Working for Women video is now out in the world, a beautifully visual telling of W4W’s mission and story…in under two minutes. We’re grateful to Northguild in Kingston for their amazing work on this project. We hope you’ll help spread the word about W4W by sharing this video with friends and colleagues.

We put the Working for Women model into action, and the results continue to impress our partners

Working for Women is working with professional services company ZS to tailor a new model of corporate social engagement. Our goal was to create a partnership that was mutually beneficial to the corporate partner, individual staff participants, and nonprofits. This summer we continued to expand that partnership by bringing ZS’s skills to our partner Bottomless Closet to develop a plan for a mobile unit to allow Bottomless Closet to expand their service reach and assist more women in the NYC area.

We will be continuing to build this partnership this Fall by doing another negotiation skills workshop with New Women New Yorkers (NWNY) and expanding to the Princeton office to engage employees there with another skill based project. More to come!

We welcomed Unshattered into our portfolio of nonprofit partners

It’s easy to get excited about bags! Especially the ones made through Unshattered, a nonprofit social enterprise that takes women who are recovering addicts and teaches them a trade. As women learn to make bags, they learn to become whole again. Each beautiful unique bag is upcycled (created from remnant material from various industries) and contains a hidden message from the artist, a name for others still struggling with addiction, and a gold thread as a nod to the Japanese art form of Kintsugi. Their model works: to date, they have experienced ZERO relapses of their employees.

Working for Women is thrilled to now include Unshattered among our partner organizations that help women gain economic independence. When you support Working for Women, you support a range of multiple nonprofits that invest in women, all fostering opportunities to create a more equitable world for all.

We shared and learned, several times over

  • At the OWN IT! Entrepreneurial Women’s Conference at SUNY Ulster, we presented Working for Women’s mission and video to great applause.
  • At the Omega Institute’s NonProfit Retreat, Working for Women’s board learned much about one another and our continued work together.
  • We participated in the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program and enjoyed spending time with women from Kyrgyz Republic discussing empowerment for women and girls, among other topics vital to the Program’s objectives. Other objectives outlined by the Department of State include examining how women in business in the United States have overcome obstacles by supporting one another; becoming familiar with governmental and nongovernmental entities that assist and encourage women entrepreneurs financially and ethically; visiting women-owned enterprises; and talking with women entrepreneurs. W4W was honored to be part of this project.

    The season left us deeply inspired, invigorated, and grateful as we head into the final months of W4W’s first year.