Young Women’s Initiative specifically targets the needs of young women in NYC

Written by Arielle Kandel

Two weeks ago, the Speaker of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, officially announced the launch of the Young Women’s Initiative, the “first initiative in the nation to specifically target and address systemic disparities faced by young women.” This project is described as a multiplatform coalition that will aim at “supporting young women in New York City and combating chronic racial and gender inequality in outcomes when it comes to healthcare, education, involvement in the justice system and economic development.” This announcement directly follows the publication last month of a groundbreaking report by The New York Women’s Foundation, focusing on the challenges and threats faced by young women and outlining a concrete blueprint for action.

The report found that today there are approximately 800,000 girls and young women, ages 9 to 24, living in New York City. Nearly three-quarters are girls and young women of color, and about 40 percent are immigrants or the daughters of immigrants. As a group, they still form less than ten percent of the city’s total population. But, as the report states, “that raw statistic gives little indication of the outsized importance of this group (…) Low-income girls from communities of color and immigrant communities shoulder huge responsibilities from a very early age — generally with minimal acknowledgement or support.”

The report goes on to highlight the potential and opportunities girls and young women have and says that age 9 to 24 is a key period in a young woman’s development: “[T]hroughout these years of maturation girls naturally possess huge stores of mental, physical and creative energies, coupled with a willingness to channel those energies into structured academic, artistic, social, and athletic pursuits.”

But girls and young women of color and of immigrant backgrounds face critical challenges, threats, and deprivations that take a toll on their development and hinder their opportunities, including:

• Parents and other caregivers who are often “too overworked, overstressed, and under-supported to provide consistent reinforcement;”
• Frequent instances of prejudice and discrimination because of their gender, race, or ethnicity;
• A deteriorated living environment characterized in particular by difficult housing conditions, high pollution, and low-quality nutrition;
• High risks of violence, bullying, sexual harassment, and assault;
• Public services in the areas of child welfare, education, and employment training that pay little attention and/or are unable to meet their specific needs.

The outcomes of this series of challenges and threats are grim: “Girls who begin their lives in deep poverty are rarely enabled to climb out of that poverty, [and to] build lives of solid emotional and physical health.” For example, the report explains, “[M]ore than 40% of NYC’s black and Latina girls — and comparable percentages of girls from several new immigrant communities — are denied the care and reinforcement they need to finish high school.”

The last part of the report provides a comprehensive list of operational recommendations for the nonprofit, public, and philanthropic sectors to address these challenges and threats, and to provide the necessary support to girls and young women, particularly among communities of color and immigrants. Outlined below are several key recommendations (to read more, access the full report here).

Non-profit sector

• When formulating programs for girls, seek guidance from seasoned and successful providers of girl-focused services, and – even more importantly – from the girls themselves.
• For providers supporting women’s employment – focus more strategically and proactively on the particular needs of out-of-school, out-of-work (OSOW) young women, ages 16-24.

Public sector

• Increasing investment into high-quality programming for high-school-age students; and better addressing the factors (e.g., responsibility for minding younger siblings or for earning money; parental concerns about the hours or location of programming) that can impede teenage girls’ participation in that programming.

Philanthropic sector

• Spearhead a broad-based, unflagging campaign bringing together policy-makers, heads of key City agencies, heads of major and community-based nonprofits – and diverse low-income girls and young women – to create more appropriate policies and programs for this population.
• Seek out and support effective individual nonprofit programs, and – also – partnerships promoting better service delivery.

Source: Executive summary of Blueprint for Investing in Girls and Young Women, The New York Women’s Foundation, September 2015.

To put into action this blueprint, comprehensive and coordinated efforts will be required from all three sectors across the board. With the recent launch by the New York City Council and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito of the Young Women’s Initiative, things seem to be moving in the right direction. We will follow the developments of this initiative closely over the coming weeks and months. It is an ambitious plan that directly relates to the core of our mission and work. To find out more about New Women New Yorkers, visit our About page and read more about our current initiatives here.