Programs/Services | Bridges to Opportunity Program

Basic Skills and Self-Sufficiency Program

Ten area service providers are teaming together to provide comprehensive services for women and men based on a framework of a succession of education, training and career related services. In addition, there will be an array of support services available based on severity of need, as each client progresses from economic and social vulnerability to self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is defined as the inidividual's ability to provide for their own needs and their family's needs.

Additional Background Information about the Program

Basic Skills and Self-Sufficiency Program Flyer

Basic Skills and Self-Sufficiency Program Application

Empowering Women in the Workplace

Women working full time today earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. The numbers are even worse for women of color. An African-American woman earns only 63 cents and a Latina only 52 cents for each dollar earned by a white male. Wage gaps persist across a wide spectrum of occupations, through every level of education, and in every state of the country.

Restore broad protections against discrimination
Women continue to face pervasive limitations on their opportunities at work. In addition to wage discrimination, women are subjected to sexual harassment and retaliation, and continue to be denied jobs and promotions based on their sex. Pregnancy discrimination complaints are on the rise and women who are parents often face damaging stereotypes about their level of commitment to the workplace. These problems have been deeply exacerbated by a series of damaging Supreme Court decisions that undercut the fabric of legal protections that women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and individuals subject to age discrimination have relied upon for decades.

Expand access for women to jobs and economic opportunities
Women continue to confront a glass ceiling that limits their access to the top positions in the workforce and their economic opportunities. For example, women comprise less than 2.5% of chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. Women-owned small businesses receive only about 3% of the billions of dollars in federal contracts that are awarded every year. And far too many occupations in this country remain dominated by one gender, with those dominated by men typically providing better wages and benefits.

Guarantee a Living Wage
Women who work should be able to achieve economic self-sufficiency. However, women are nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers, and the current minimum wage is insufficient to keep women with children out of poverty.

Raise the minimum wage
Even with Congress' minimum wage hike -- to $7.25 an hour in July 2009 -- the salary of full-time year-round minimum wage worker is still more than $3,000 below the current federal poverty level for a mother with two children. Congress should pass additional increases in the minimum wage that bring the minimum back to its historical level of 50% of non-supervisory wages and then index the wage to the consumer price index.