Powerful Voices Receives Grant to Fund Redesigned Program for Incarcerated Girls and Help Strengthen the Organization's Overall Capacity

SEATTLE -- Powerful Voices, a community-based organization providing all-girl education and programs that foster the development of strong women, today announced its receipt of a $145,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The majority of the grant money will be used over a three-year period to implement Powerful Voices' newly redesigned "STAGES" program serving girls in the King County Juvenile Detention System. The remainder has been promised as a multi-year challenge grant to help strengthen the organization's overall capacity-building efforts.

Powerful Voices' juvenile detention program has been redesigned to serve girls more effectively, on a longer-term basis and in concert with other service providers and organizations that serve the same population. Powerful Voices also offers an after-school program for girls at several Seattle middle schools and an intensive summer leadership series for middle school girls.

"Our programs aim to help girls experience a new blueprint for girlhood, one that defies the stereotypes and limits they experience elsewhere," said Julie Edsforth, executive director and co-founder of Powerful Voices. "We couldn't be any more thrilled about receiving this generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to increase our impact in the community, and hopefully over time, serve as a national model in improving the lives of girls."

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is proud to support Powerful Voices in its ongoing efforts to foster the potential of adolescent girls by providing programs which encourage learning and leadership," said Jaime Garcia, director of Pacific Northwest programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since starting its programs, Powerful Voices has served more than 2,000 young women in the Seattle-King County area. In keeping with its mission to offer girl-led, strength-based programs to young women from a diversity of socio-economic backgrounds, all of its programs are offered free of charge. Powerful Voices was honored in 2000 with a national award from the Juvenile Court Centennial Initiative for its innovative Young Women's Support Project initiative. Powerful Voices' STAGES program is one of the only gender-specific programs in the country designed to meet the specific needs of girls in detention.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Pacific Northwest Program funds nonprofits in Washington and Oregon dedicated to improving the lives of children and families in need.

Powerful Voices was founded in 1995 by three visionary women to improve the lives of girls. The organization's mission was initially shaped by key findings of a county-wide needs assessment, Powerful Voices, King County Women Talk About Their Needs, completed on behalf of the King County Women's Advisory Board. Importantly for Powerful Voices, it pointed out a fundamental issue: many of the challenges facing women in King County are rooted in adolescence. Powerful Voices addresses these issues at their root by developing the individual potential in adolescent girls, not by preaching to them, but by offering hands-on experiences in which they develop their leadership and critical thinking skills. Now with more than five years experience of hands-on work, Powerful Voices is instilling leadership skills, fostering the development of critical thinking, and promoting the individual potential in adolescent girls through programs in Seattle public middle schools, and both in and out of juvenile detention.

On the Internet:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, www.gatesfoundation.org
Powerful Voices, www.powerfulvoices.org