The best way to bring about lasting social change for women and girls is to engage and empower community leaders to influence public policy and legislation.

In 2007, the Women’s Fund of New Jersey established a Women’s Policy Institute (WPI) to help move a social change agenda forward.  With the generous support of the Catalyst Fund of the Tides Foundation and the Fund for New Jersey, as well as many corporate and private donor contributions, the Policy Institute has enjoyed a successful initial year.
The purpose of the WPI is to enable more community leaders – through training, coalition-building, and financial resources – to work with policymakers to enact laws that eliminate the barriers to self-sufficiency for women and families in New Jersey.

The Women’s Fund of New Jersey’s WPI is the second of its kind in the nation.   Modeling the best practices of the Women’s Foundation of California, the WPI training includes:

• how to craft bills, work with legislative staff, understand the budget and appropriations processes, advocate before legislators, and testify at hearings;
• hands-on teamwork during the year to advance self-selected policy projects; and
• guidance and counsel from a core faculty of policy experts and team mentors

 
In 2009-2010, WFNJ will be pursuing additional funding to enable the Institute to bring more resources to women of color leaders in the community doing reproductive justice work, and to initiate new programs that will train women and girls to become successful advocates.

During the year, the fellows participated in two Reproductive Justice Retreats. At the first, over the span of two days, WPI fellows worked on group dynamics, heard from leaders in the field of reproductive health, and brainstormed ideas for their policy issue.

Retreat II was held on October 30th and 31st. During this two-day sabbatical from their organizations, fellows were taken through exercises designed to assist them in narrowing their policy topic. By the end of the second day of this retreat, the fellows had decided to spend their WPI experience focusing on the rapid treatment of women’s reproductive cancers.

Fellows of the Women's Policy Institute
Marilyn Cintron Horizon Health Center	Maneesha Kelkar Manavi, Inc.
Marilyn Carpenteyro LUPE	Monique Howard NJ Women and AIDS Network
Maretta Short NOW-NJ Foundation, Inc	Stephanie Clark  My Daughter’s Keeper