In addition to providing financial and in-kind support, Spark’s investments increase awareness of little-known, grassroots women’s organizations. Spark’s grants often act as a seal of approval to other  well-established funders, helping our grantees secure larger investments in the future. We’ve seen this success with grantees like Akili Dada, and our 2011 grantees are no exception. From receiving a personal honor from President Sarkozy of France to winning New York’s prestigious Union Square Award, our 2011 grantees are propelling into the New Year with substantial support.

At Spark’s Spring Speaker Series, members meet with Jenni Williams, founder of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). We were so inspired by WOZA’s  nonviolent push for democracy and human rights that many Spark members immediately chipped in with funding and technology donations to improve WOZA’s ability to organize. Since Spark’s initial grant, others have caught on to WOZA’s exceptional work, including the French government. Just a few weeks ago, President Sarkozy awarded Jenni Williams with the French National Order of Merit.

Spark New York’s first grantee, Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition, also received substantial recognition and support. Much like Spark, YWCHAC understands the benefit of linking fun with volunteerism. Their unique model resulted in the successful engagement of New York’s youth in comprehensive HIV/AIDS education–not an easy task. Last week YWCHAC won the prestigious Union Square Award. This award includes a $50,000 general support grant. For a small organization this level of unrestricted funding will be transformative.

You can help Spark’s efforts with your own seed grants! Choose the cause you want to support, and we’ll help leverage these funds in 2012.

Turn 3 minutes of attention into a $5,000 grant by voting for Spark’s grantee Sweet Dreams in the “Give Back” Challenge! Yesterday, Shannon Farley wrote about Anna, a Spark member, who turned $7 of unused flex spending into 3 months of medical supplies for a women’s shelter. With just 3 minutes, you, too, can have an exponential impact!

Sweet Dreams is a contestant in the GOOD + Brookside Foods “Give Back” Challenge. The winner of this challenge receives a whopping $5,000 grant to implement their programs. The winner is dictated by the number of votes received, so your vote really counts! Voting is easy; it just takes a few minutes of your time.  Let’s all take a quick break from our Tuesday routines to make a difference in these young women’s lives.

The Details:

1. Voting is open NOW through December 9th, 12pm PST at http://brooksidefoods.maker.good.is/

2. Follow the link above, search for Sweet Dreams (currently #47 out of 120 applicants) and vote though Facebook or by email.

3. Each person can vote once during the voting period, so alert your network about the challenge!

The $5,000 grant would make a significant impact on the 12 young women entrepreneurs, ages 14-21, by supporting their business development and training.

Rally your networks and VOTE Sweet Dreams to the top!

She worked at a company with great health benefits and she was healthy. Anna knew others did not share her fortune. Indeed many of the grantees that Anna learned about through Spark could benefit from basic health supplies. Anna had seen requests on Spark’s Facebook page for first aid kits and other health needs. Spark grantees could use that $7. They could probably use more than $7.

Anna had three healthy co-workers who sat in her cube bank. She figured they too might have a little extra cash in their flex spending accounts. So she asked for their help. Over the next few days, Anna and her co-workers pooled their resources and purchased $300 worth of health supplies. Then with Spark’s assistance, they donated three months of health supplies to a local women’s shelter.

Spark’s investment model harnesses non-traditional, social capital resources to support grassroots women’s organizations. That’s exactly what Anna did when she grew $7 into $300 into 3 months of health supplies for an under-resourced organization. Every year Spark honors Anna and her act of ingenuity by collecting health supplies in the month of December from our members and distributing them to our local grantees.

On December 7^th at Spark’s Annual Holiday Party, we will be collecting these gifts. In you are in town, please stop by. If you bring health supplies (first aid kits, feminine sanitary supplies, a box of condoms, etc.), you’ll get in for free.

If you are unable to make it, you can support our grantees directly here. 100% of donations raised in the month of December will support Spark’s grantmaking program.

This holiday season we invite you to celebrate your health and join Anna in flexing your resources.

To learn more about Spark and our investment model, email Programs@sparksf.org.

Women make up 15% of corporate boards and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Many of the women represented in these paltry percentages will be in San Francisco this week for the US State Department’s Women and the Economy Summit in anticipation of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in November. The purpose of the summit is to outline policy solutions for access to finance, markets and capital to bolster women’s participation in the economies of the Pacific Rim.

In preparation, we at Spark have been reading up on different solutions to the global gender gap, from sex quotas for corporate boards to increasing women in middle management pipelines. Our research suggests that classic leadership trajectories remain implausible for women. Institutional bias in combination with a lack of role models, mentors and advocates stunt women’s progress at every rung—particularly on the path to the C-Suite. But there is another troubling trend that must be addressed. Women don’t opt out of leadership–we lean back.

A recent Harvard Business Review article unpacked the trend of leaning back in India. Educated female talent can be credited for the growth of India’s economy. Yet, like their American counterparts, when Indian women get married and have children they lean back from leadership opportunities. Some of this has to do with class and some of this has to do with culture, but it doesn’t happen to men when they become husbands and fathers. All over the world, the word woman remains synonymous with caregiver. Until men split care work equitably, we will continue to see women lean back.

Here’s a policy recommendation: Invite men to join in the conversation. 1% of the confirmed speakers for the summit are men.  How can we move the needle when we exclude half the population?

This week, as we discuss economic growth strategies for the Pacific Rim, it is critical to frame of a vision for the global economy that puts class, culture and BOTH genders at the forefront.

You’ve probably seen MADE. It’s a MTV staple in which they transform an invariably gawky teenager into a beauty queen or motocross racer.  Recently, Spark got a call from MADE. They had young woman who wanted to be MADE into a philanthropist.

We were thrilled by the prospect. Teenage protagonists who want to be philanthropists, governors, human rights activists, or Fortune 500 CEOs. That’s progress.

Here’s the catch—the two-minute webisode had to be shot over the course of one week.  The producer believed to make it work the audience needed to witness a complete story arc. Meet a homeless family, build a house, and watch them move it. The whole thing seemed a bit like speed dating.

If you are doing philanthropy right, it should take more than a week. It took a long time to create these problems and it’s going to take awhile to fix them.  That doesn’t mean they are not worthy of our attention.

So, I took two minutes to share a couple Spark story arcs with the producer–an economic empowerment program in Ghana run by former sex-slaves and a shelter for human trafficking survivors in San Francisco.  He was moved and commented, “Man, if you only built a house, too.”  We laughed—together.  He was struggling to push a television program to consider different story lines and we’re trying to push philanthropy beyond speed-giving.  Neither task is easy but both are worthy.

Last night, Spark hosted its 2^nd Career Night at Oasis for Girls. Located in the South of Market Area of San Francisco, Oasis’ mission is to provide a safe place where young women are inspired and empowered to become strong, creative leaders in their communities. Oasis Executive Director Jessica Van Tuyl noted of the Spark Career Night partnership, “for many of our girls, this is their only exposure to successful, professional women who share some of their lived experiences so it represents an exciting space to dream and consider all that is possible in their lives.”

The panelists ranged from Monica, a pulmonologist and AIDS researcher, to Tatiana, a civil litigator, to Nancy, an investment fund advisor, to Megan, a nonprofit fundraiser, to Shelley, a skincare specialist and small business owner, and to me, a community development banker.

All of us came prepared to share the story of our life journeys. Some of us were raised by immigrant parents. Some started working at as early as 14. Some of us were often the only woman in a room. The girls nodded as we spoke. Parts of our stories reflect their own. We described studying hard, taking risks, failing, succeeding and realizing our worth.

Several of the girls asked about our salaries. Taking Jessica’s words to heart, we provided detailed and honest accounts of our salary progression, we opened up about our savings and student loan debt and we described our experiences negotiating  for compensation that reflects our work and worth.

I heard a girl in the group gasp and say, “I didn’t know a girl could make that kind of money.”

Next week is part two of Career Night – it’s the Spark Swap for Good for Oasis for Girls.

The girls are learning about work etiquette and dress, so we thought it would be a fun if we hosted a clothing swap. Each of them will be bring a few items to share and Spark members generously provided donations to supplement the girls’ contributions. We will spend the evening trying on new suits and continuing our discussion from the panel.

As professional women, we know what a new suit represents–the opportunity to dream and consider all that is possible.

There is a lot of chatter about how to measure and evaluate the impact of networks. The Monitor Institute and The Knight Foundation recently released a new report on the topic. Even, shirtless dancing guy has inspired discussions.

 As a network, these conversations are particularly relevant to Spark. There is network impact we can measure and evaluate–mostly around our grantmaking and member engagement. But there is all of the other stuff that happens when working in a network-centric model like Spark. Good stuff. Serendipitous bursts that broaden our social returns. These bursts are juicy. They are filled with the elements that ignite social change. It is not clear how we can measure it. At least, it is not clear to us yet. To get clear, we must first talk about it.

So here is what happened today:

Elena Peifer is a member who serves on our Grants and Advocacy Committee. She also writes our Spark News Digest, a collection of a week’s worth of thought-provoking articles on women, philanthropy, human rights, and international development. Elena is headed to law school this week and so she signed off as our Digestress. Notes from digest followers poured in after Elena’s final post. Folks wrote that Elena’s articles made them think and question and WANT to open their inbox in morning.  These are all good things.

And then, we got this note:

Please know that I forwarded these articles to the Social Science teachers who, in turn, gave them to the students as part of the curriculum. So YOU made an impact in the lives of hundreds of teenagers every week. You will be missed, Elena.

Now, that’s juicy. That’s the power of a network.

Over the weekend two homes were raided without a search warrant. At the time, no arrests were made. Then, on Tuesday, eight more WOZA members were arrested including a mother and her 3-month-old baby. Lawyers have been deployed.

Yesterday (May 25^th, 2011) was Africa Day in Zimbabwe. The electricity was cut for 6-18 hours.

At Spark’s Speaker Series last week, we were honored to hear from three professionals with insight on technology’s impact on women’s rights:

1. Dunstan Allison Hope: Managing Director at BSR, a nonprofit that advises Fortune 500 companies on human rights and sustainability strategies. Dunstan is also a co-founder of the Global Network Initiative and co-author of Big Business, Big Responsibilities.
2. Sakina Arsiwala: co-founder of Campfire Labs and the former international charter leader at Youtube.
3. Rachel Yeager: leader of the HERproject, a BSR initiative focused on improving women’s health needs in global supply chains.

Dunstan opened the discussion by asking the audience about the evening’s topic…do technology and business have a positive or negative impact on human and women’s rights?  While the audience’s reaction was mixed, Rachel volleyed this question by stating that businesses can have a positive impact on communities…particularly on women.

Rachel explained that in some countries women’s rights are lower than general human rights and that benchmark for human rights and women’s rights can differ vastly across national borders. Unlike governments, businesses operate under global standards for both. In countries with comparatively lower standards for women’s rights, global businesses give women opportunities that may otherwise be unavailable. To illustrate this point, Rachel explained that women make up roughly 80% of Bangladesh’s garment industry. 20 years ago these communities were ashamed of working women. Working women were viewed as prostitutes and often forbidden to marry. Now, the situation has shifted- women are encouraged to work and empowered by their incomes. Dowries are less common as women provide for themselves financially. Her example demonstrated how businesses can empower women by giving them vocational opportunities previously unavailable.

Sakina pushed the point further and dove into the discussion on
technology’s impact on society.  While human rights and norms differ widely from country to country, technology can open the discussion of rights in a global context. This resonates with one of the most important byproducts of technology – education and information sharing. With education as a critical component of development and women’s empowerment, technology has the capacity to dramatically improve women’s rights around the globe.

The night concluded with a discussion on the impact of technology on women’s employment both home and abroad. As women continue to enter the global workforce, they become a stronger market for businesses. As a result, businesses are investing in women to better understand this global market. Our panelists hoped that such investments will trickle down to the workforce in the tech sector–where women are vastly underrepresented.

If you missed this lively discussion last week, make sure to check out Spark’s website for some more great upcoming events. Thank you to all who were able to attend- we appreciate all your support!

Photo Credit: Sokwanele-Zimbabwe

On Wednesday, May 18^th, six WOZA members were arrested for a peaceful protest in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. They have been accused of painting messages on the road—messages that read- “power to poor people,” “no lengthy load shedding” and “prepaid meters now!”

For the last five years, WOZA members employed an organizing strategy to end price gouging and corruption by the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC). Extended blackouts and overbilling greatly impact the quality of life of Zimbabweans.

WOZA fears that these six members are being tortured. Their fear is merited. In March 2011, fourteen WOZA members were tortured while in custody. This morning these six women were denied food and access to their lawyers.

WOZA has asked us for help. They would like us to call the Western Commonage police station +263 9 403996 and request to speak with Assistant Inspector Purazeni, the officer-in-charge. The Standard Time difference is GMT +2 hours. When you speak with him ask him to abide by international standards of detention. WOZA has also suggested that we call the Law and Order Department at +263 9 72515 and implore their protection of the basic human rights of these activists.

When Jenni Williams, the co-founder of WOZA, spoke to Spark earlier this year, she told us that flooding the police station with calls is one of the few strategies that can protect her members from certain beatings and torture. A clogged phone line becomes a nuisance and the police release their detainees with greater expediency to avoid the hassle.

Please join Spark in being a nuisance. Tell us how your calls are going and we will continue to provide updates.

Let’s speak up for the women of WOZA.