Setting the Agenda for Women & Girls

In May 2024, Melinda French Gates announced her departure from the Gates Foundation and committed $1 billion in new spending over the next two years for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including in the United States.

Her action follows 20 years as an advocate for women and girls and her experience that "the second the global agenda gets crowded, women and girls fall off. She wrote in a New York Times op-ed of "Decades of research on economics, well-being and governance make it clear that investing in women and girls benefits everyone" she said. "Because I have been given this extraordinary opportunity, I am determined to do everything I can to seize it and to set an agenda that helps other women and girls set theirs, too,"

Setting a local agenda

With our community’s generous gifts to the Fund for Women and Girls, we also seized the opportunity to help set an agenda—one to support local women and girls. Created in 2016, this $3 million endowed fund is helping boost the economic growth of Santa Cruz County by supporting the educational and career success of local women and girls. The fund was started with a $1.5 million gift and an additional $500,000 challenge grant. Local donations helped us meet this challenge and now, through the power of endowment, the fund continues to grow allowing us to make grants for women and girls—forever. So far, the fund has granted out $1.1 million, including $104,000 in 2024.

The first major grant from the fund was for the collaborative Girls Paving the Way initiative (GPW), a college readiness program for middle school girls in Watsonville. When COVID hit, the entire landscape for women and girls in Santa Cruz County changed. Thanks to the flexibility of the fund, we were able to help fill immediate needs for local women and girls to help women and their families stay housed, fed, in school and able to pay bills. Read more from our 2022 fund update.

Your generosity at work

Our most recent grants focus on providing stable, safe, and supportive environments for women and girls throughout their entire lives. A grant to Siena House is supporting holistic residential and wraparound services for pregnant women and new mothers experiencing homelessness. Participants are supported towards stability through individual and group therapy, case management, life skills, and parenting education. Siena House’s alumni program provides ongoing support to assist individuals after exiting the program, and drop-in services offer essential resources to vulnerable members of the community in need of diapers, formula, and other resources.

Jamie, a Siena House alumna, is now a student at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Siena. She says, “Little did I know Siena would be my saving grace. Therapy helped me deal with and process life-long traumas, and the program provided the new start I desperately needed to radically transform me into the mother and woman I am today."

A grant to Walnut Avenue Family and Women’s Center supports programs that interrupt intergenerational cycles of trauma. Their services include programs for survivors of domestic violence and an early childhood education center that addresses trauma and teaches social and emotional skills to nurture healthy family relationships. One working mom said that because of Walnut Avenue's Early Education Center her child "has a safe, clean environment to develop his social skills. He is treated kindly and respected. His thoughts and ideas are valued, and the staff interacts with positive language that he can understand." Another mom says, "The center is amazing. I've been able to keep my job and housing because of the center availability and flexibility."

A grant to Families in Transition helps provide housing stability for women and their families in the most expensive rental market in the country and other grants to Girls, Inc. of the Central Coast and Salud y Cariño focus on building girls’ confidence and setting the foundation for healthy lives through leadership development, peer mentoring, and communications and assertiveness training.

Investing in women benefits everyone

As Melinda wrote, to support women and girls internationally, nationally, and locally, we need to set our own agenda, “or someone will set it for you.” We are witness to the extraordinary outcomes of local efforts that uplift our community one woman and girl at a time.

Header photo: Siena House alumna Jamie and her daughter Honor.