Past Grants Awarded

2022

• Professional Women's Network: $5,000
  PWN exists to nourish women to excel in their personal and professional lives while being a positive and active influence in their communities. Pittsburgh has been identified as a city unable to provide a positive quality of life for women of color, Black women in particular. PWN is designed to address that unfortunate statistic through programming like Women's Empowerment Experience, Ladies Who Lead, Executive Roundtables, Women's Month Celebration, and Executive Coaching Cohorts. This grant allowed PWN to continue and strengthen these programs.

• HEARTH: $3,000
  HEARTH provides housing and a range of supportive services that equips homeless women with children, who are survivors of domestic violence or other trauma, to become independent, economically self-sufficient, and adequately housed. HEARTH's workforce development program helps create economic security and empower the women and transgender women who reside in their transitional housing. This grant allowed HEARTH to continue these efforts.

• Angels' Place: $3,000
  Angels' Place was awarded a grant to fund its "Early Childhood Education & Family Support" program, which works to ensure that single parent families who meet low-income guidelines in the Pittsburgh community have access to high-quality child care and family support services. The program does this through advocacy, early childhood education, and family support programming, all of which increase the probability of parents obtaining stable housing, finding employment, building a secure future, and raising healthy confident children who will excel in school and life.
  
  

2020

• Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG): $10,000
  SWSG used a grant from YWGS to launch an 8-week pilot program focused on STEM mentorship and career exploration. This "STEM Role Models in Residence Pilot Program" leveraged SWSG's existing mentor program; delivered learning, after-school workshops, field trips, and service projects; and allowed SWSG to evaluate their programming and study what elements resonated with girls and existing gender and racial stereotypes in STEM, to replicate a more girl-centered culturally relevant program at SWSG's 40+ program sites.

• Crisis Center North: $2,000
  CNN empowers victims of domestic violence and cultivates community attitudes and behaviors that break the cycle of violence. This grant funded a Peer-to-Peer Empowerment Program which is designed to help young people (from 12 participating schools) develop the skills necessary to approach dating/domestic violence and work towards social change. 

• Ruling Our Experiences: $1,500
  ROX is a national non-profit that focuses on creating generations of confident girls who control their own relationships, experiences, decisions and futures. This grant funded the "Being a Girl ROX!" project, which provided the opportunity for 30 adolescent girls in the Pittsburgh area to build a stronger connection to each other and to school through lessons, discussions and activities focused on building confidence, building healthy and supportive relationships, developing critical life skills and planning for a successful and rewarding future.
   

2019

• Global Minds Initiative:$2,000
  GMI is a for-youth, by-youth organization created to combat the issues of cultural intolerance and discrimination through an after school tutoring program between English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and Native English Speaking (NES) students. Global Minds serves as an educational support system for ESL students, while educating NES students about other cultures, in order to create more globally minded young leaders. YWGS grant monies supported the attendance of Global Minds' chapter leaders at the organization's Inclusive Leadership Summit during the summer of 2019. 

• Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom: $3,000
  Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom's mission is to build trust, respect, and relationships between American and Canadian Muslim and Jewish women and teenage girls.  SoSS women and girls commit to ending acts of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiment, stand up for one another when hate is aimed at their communities and engage in social action work. YWGS funds supported the Pittsburgh teen chapter in creating and implementing a "Stand Up Sisters-Youth Training Youth to Stand Up to Hate" pilot program.  

• ARYSE: $2,000
  ARYSE supports immigrant and refugee youth in Allegheny County in becoming engaged, confident, and celebrated members of their communities.  YWGS supported ARYSE's Girls Art and Maker Group.

• South Wing: $500
  South Wing will use a grant from YWGS to support its Valor project which works with adolescent girls ages 13-18 years to build community and eradicate discord within the Hilltop communities. Specifically, the funding will go toward a School to Community Ambassadors program.

• Women and Girls Foundation: $2,000
  Women and Girls Foundation's mission is to achieve equality for women and girls, now and for generations to come. The organization’s active work is focused on developing the female leaders of tomorrow and advancing women’s rights today.  YWGS funds supported GirlGov, a civic engagement program that trains high-school girls to be our next generation of leaders.

• The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh: $2,000
  The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh inspires engagement with Holocaust history and connects it to the injustices of today. It builds relationships across communities, working to end antisemitism, racism, and prejudice in our neighborhoods.  YWGS provided funds to support a new neighborhood outreach initiative which uses the lessons of the Holocaust as a lens to discuss difficult issues of violence and resilience with girls in underserved communities.
  
  

2018

• Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG): $5,500
  SWSG used a grant from YWGS to launch an 8-week pilot program focused on STEM mentorship and career exploration. This "STEM Role Models in Residence Pilot Program" leveraged SWSG's existing mentor program; delivered learning, after-school workshops, field trips, and service projects; and allowed SWSG to evaluate their programming and study what elements resonated with girls and existing gender and racial stereotypes in STEM, to replicate a more girl-centered culturally relevant program at SWSG's 40+ program sites.

• Gwen’s Girls: $2,500
  Gwen's Girls empowers girls and young women in the Pittsburgh area by responding to the needs of more than 350 girls annually through prevention, school-based, and community-based programs and services. YWGS grant monies supported Gwen's Girls' CAB (Client Advisory Board) Council, which engages peer-selected girl-leaders across three after school program sites and a group home to serve as the voice of the Gwen’s Girls population.

• Tzohar Seminary: $2,000
  Tzohar Seminary provides an environment where creative and talented young women engage in profound Jewish learning and are empowered to communicate their ideas and feelings through various artistic forms in order to transform their own lives and the lives of others. YWGS funded Tzohar Seminary's "Creative Expression Beyond School" initiative, allowing young women to prepare and lead creative arts experiences for seniors and children with special needs.

• G.O Girls: $1,500
  G.O. Girls is an organization that addresses the critical need for supportive services for young women transitioning out of foster care into adulthood.

2017

• TALK: the New Sex Ed: $5,000
  Local Pittsburgh non-profit changing the way teens and parents prepare to navigate a complex sexual world.

• Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh: $3,000
  The  Children’s Program, which provides a safe, welcoming, culturally competent, and nurturing space to help child witnesses and victims of domestic abuse heal from trauma.

• PROGRESS: $2,000
  An organization based at Carnegie Melon University that works to empower girls and women through the art of negotiation.