Inclusive for Women Inc.

With strength in community organizing by its leadership, today the organization effectively offers meaningful, women-focused educational programs, advocacy forums, intergenerational leadership development, dialogue and coaching sessions, as well as mentoring and peer-networking services that are proven to have a high impact in diversity and positive social progress.

The organization’s work is centered on the following cause and objectives:
•Global Impact: To collaborate with area women’s and girls’ organizations to build a strong society of diversity and inclusion.
•Advocacy: To provide a platform where women and girls can find their voices, choices and share their stories.
•Positive Living: To facilitate intergenerational leadership development for women and girls.
•Education: To provide programs, events and services that advance social opportunities for learning, promoting literacy and advance conflict resolution.
•Empowerment: To mentor women and youth in need of personal and professional development.
•Economic Sustainability: To develop a connecting HUB for women’s focus groups and organizations.

Programs are required to utilize the 3E organizational model: Educating, Engaging and Empowering. The model ensures that every program sponsored by the organization will incorporate activities to educate participants, advancing in social learning, engage them in a life improvement activity and empower them to act within their own circles of influence.

IMPACT: Anticipated Outcomes of all programs & services
The main goal of all WOT program and services are to increase the quality of life and social progress index of the community we served. Social progress index aim is to measure the outcomes that matter to the lives of our participants, not the inputs. For evaluation purposes, each event or program includes a pre- and post-session survey designed to capture expectations and goals prior to the session and assess whether those expectations and goals were met by program activities. If necessary, follow up meeting is scheduled with the facilitator and coach to share evaluation results for improvement. In addition, a follow up survey and feedback will be requested from participants to measure the longevity outcomes of the program.

Many of us come from families of immigrants who had to work hard and overcome obstacles to make it here, and that tradition carries on with us today.
However, working hard demonstrates that even by holding down two or three jobs at once, as many Ohioans do – it does not lead to financial stability. According to ALICE report in 2015, across Ohio, 40% of households struggled to afford basic household necessities. “ALICE,” is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This report gives a name to the people in our state who are hard-working but still struggle to make ends meet. In Lucas County, 19% of households are living in poverty while 26% of households are identified as ALICE. There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women and young women. Hence, in 2018 we launched our new “No Women Left Behind” Initiatives fund.

The No Women Left Behind (NWLB) Initiative fund offers any women, young women and Disconnected Youth that have been identified as marginalized or underserved, with financial hardship (according to ALICE threshold) to receive education, engagement and empowerment within our program and services for free. Marginalization can affect a community at the macro-level, where our members may lack access to affordable formal education, equal employment or gender-related opportunities. This initiative has provided them with access to various programs and services such as our Professional Educational Development series, Educational Initiatives forum sessions, Mentoring and Coaching services. Now, our NWLB recipients are able to increase their access to economic resources and opportunities including jobs, financial services, skills development, health wellness and connection with our peer-network community support group.

Since March 2018 to June 2018, more than 20 individuals between the ages of 19 to 66 years old have accessed, received services and attended our programs under this NWLB initiatives.

Youth Development Efforts -We have created spaces where young women and women of many generations can interact and support one another. Creating intergenerational spaces, based on non-hierarchical and anti-oppression frameworks, allows for the emergence of transformational leadership that draws on the contributions of all generations. Here, you will be introduced to our Young Women of Toledo group. By supporting a variety of young women and women across different ages to join in a participatory exchange knowledge, experiences, and skills, we create spaces that foster unique opportunities for innovation mentorship, learning, and action planning. It is in these spaces that leadership can be nurtured and supported with the goal of learning from the past and reflecting on the present to create a more just and equitable future.

We organized two advocacy forums; the first forum was a Women’s Intersectional-Intercultural panel discussion and the second forum was International Women’s Day, #PressforProgress.

In Fall 2017, the Intersectional-Intercultural panel successfully helped create awareness and advocated for common values, such as commitment to solidarity, social justice and stronger cohesion and a stronger voice for the community. In this panel forum, we featured four women and two families from various traditions and ethnicity highlighting their inspiration and challenges as they continued creating strong family bonds. Our moderator and panelists successfully engaged the audience on how mixed, interracial or blended families live together, not just to co-exist.

In Spring 2018, we were joined by 90 women in the community for an organized panel dialogue on #PressforProgress surrounding discussions on how we can strengthen Women Economic Empowerment and gender parity in Greater Toledo in conjunction with International Women’s Day. Below are the results of the attendees and their commitment to specifically concentrate on #pressforprogress for gender parity in their own sphere of influence:
• 9 women pledged to Forge Visibility of Women
• 22 women pledged to Challenge Stereotypes and Bias
• 29 women pledged to Celebrate Women's Achievements
• 15 women pledged for Positive Power
• 6 women pledged all four of the above #PressforProgress



Success Stories – Three sessions of Leadership Connection and Mentorship
With support from our Women’s Connection mentors and peer-network, we organized multiple sessions of leadership connections and mentoring programs during the period of October 2017 to February 2018. Each of our sessions offered our participants community-based knowledge and discussions centered on how women in Toledo can help support and empower each other, build strategic alliance partnerships, celebrate success and make true progress. At each session, we intentionally set up the room with at least 10 to 15 stations of tables for two. This ensured an opportunity for one to one connections with a newer concept focusing on quick-hit information, time-efficient networking and the methodical pursuit of a mentorship. During this period, we successfully connected 45 of our participants to 32 top women leaders in the community. Here are a couple of testimonials from participants:

“I attended this session and left so empowered. Empowered to take risks. Empowered to embrace my authenticity. Empowered to tell my success story and become a leaders”- Latoya .

“What a wonderful group of women- so open to the experience of learning and growing their leadership skills. I love this energy and spirit of helpfulness by everyone” – Kelly W,

•Self-Awareness and Self-Advocacy, did participants successfully develop a greater sensitivity to the challenges and opportunities in Greater Toledo to be a responsible citizen in the community and increase their awareness of how to become dynamic, global and diverse?
•Decision Making, is the individual able to make healthy decisions, develop self-esteem and become empowered? These factors are conducive to obtaining/maintaining employment, returning to school, being a good parent, and responsible citizen.
•Economic Empowerment, did participants improve their quality of life and capacity to bring about economic change for themselves, by overcoming poverty, discrimination and exploitation? Quality of life is extremely important as it is the contributing factor to achieving gender equality, poverty eradication and inclusive economic growth for their lives, families and communities.
•Advancing Social and Emotional Learning, did participants successfully develop skills to mentor others on how to create an inclusive relationship? This includes high performance and interacting in a group setting; where the individual is able to speak, disagree, offer insights and reflect to produce meaningful conversation.
•Professional and Personal Development, did participant successfully build skills that increase professional success and adapt to various organization culture?

The program framework helps participants reflect on their role as an individual in creating an innovation community where participants work towards positive goals.