Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, in 1993, a group of south Florida women established the Women's Fund of Miami-Dade, a nonprofit dedicated to funding innovative community programs geared toward girls and young women. At the time of the fund's creation, gender-specific, community-based initiatives were nearly nonexistent. According to a survey undertaken by the Women's Fund in 1996, only five out of 142 local agencies had implemented programs exclusively for women. Absent from our community were programs to assist young women who were seeking to advance their educations, to secure their economic futures, or to engage in professional leadership training. The Women's Fund of Miami-Dade took this cause to our south Florida community, and it has since generated enough support to provide more than 350 gender-specific programs with the funding they so desperately require. Last Friday, on April 30, more than 800 women gathered together at the Women's Fund annual Power of the Purse Luncheon to highlight the tremendous success of past and current programs supported by the fund. These programs support women of all backgrounds and circumstances. The Women's Fund provides financial assistance to Lotus House, for example, which is a shelter for homeless women and infants in Overtown, an area of Miami which is suffering from extreme poverty.…”