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The Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania ( WGF ) is an independent community-based foundation serving eleven counties in Southwest Pennsylvania. Our mission is to achieve equity for women and girls in the region. Through a combination of and grantmaking, WGF seeds, supports, and strengthens women's and girls' efforts to achieve social and economic justice in Southwest Pennsylvania. We give priority to the following outcomes: social and systemic change ; economic justice ; and girls' futures. Through our efforts we aim to achieve equal political representation, economic and civic participation and leadership development in all arenas. WGF is part of a larger, social change movement in the United States, one that encourages individual women as well as men to see themselves as change agents working together to make a difference in their communities. The Foundation was established as an independent 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) in 2002 and has grown to include a donor base of several hundred individuals, and has received programmatic support from local Foundations including Alcoa Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Eden Hall Foundation, FISA Foundation, The Forbes Funds, The Maurice Falk Fund, The Grable Foundation, and The Raymond John Wean Foundation. As both The University of Pittsburgh's 2004 Women's Benchmarks Report and the Institute for Women's Policy Research 2004 Status of Women in the States Report confirmed, the inequities facing women in our region are significant. More working women, single mothers, elderly women, and disabled women are suffering in poverty compared with their male counterparts. Working women are experiencing a gender gap in pay equity which is significantly more imbalanced then the national gender gap average. Women are underrepresented in high paying career fields, overrepresented in low paying career fields, and underrepresented in local and state government. Our state ranks 47th out of 50 for women's political leadership and participation. And we are ranked 45th in the nation in progress towards remedying the wage gap. Because the social and political inequities that women and girls face in our region are more pronounced than in the nation as a whole there is a compelling need for an organization whose sole focus is building gender equity in this region. The Women and Girls Foundation promotes social change in our region by addressing fundamental social inequalities and raising the awareness of these inequities to the media, to voters, to legislators, and corporate and non-profit decision makers. By serving as an independent and clear voice, the foundation will strive to bring together women and men in our region to work together to find solutions to create sustained equity for all of its citizens.

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