Women’s Economic Empowerment Program
YWCA Great Lakes Bay Region advocates for the advancement of women and families by providing programs and services to achieve economic self-sufficiency. One way we work to accomplish our mission is with the Women's Economic Empowerment Program (WEEP), which includes Pathways to Progress, Moving Ahead, Staying Ahead, and Young Women Choosing Action. WEEP offers several ways for women to increase stability through focused programming, short and long term support, and building relationships in our community.
Moving Ahead is our FREE financial empowerment workshop that guides and supports women, including those who have experienced domestic violence or financial abuse, as they expand their skills and work towards financial stability and independence.
Moving Ahead is a 10 hour workshop over 5 sessions where we provide the tools you need to make important financial decisions and work toward long-term financial security all while developing budgeting and saving skills, improving your credit score, reducing debt, budgeting, and managing financial paperwork. Financial planning and success is a life-long process - your journey to gain control of your financial future can start here!
All graduates leave the class with a budget based on current circumstances and receive a stipend of $100 to support basic needs, debt repayment, or a jumpstart your savings.
Next Sessions:
Wednesdays 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM — Nov. 6 to Dec. 4, (enrollment begins October 21st!)
Moving Ahead
“It’s so important to have some financial education and this curriculum was perfect. Very resourceful and informative, but not overwhelming or intimidating. I think it’s very important for women to be financially knowledgeable. I would recommend this program not only for the knowledge, but also for the safe space it provides women to learn, and to find resources and support.
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Pathways to Progress is our FREE goal-setting workshop offered to women struggling financially, lacking resources, or working to increase stability. Through a combination of self-examination, economic education, and resource building participants increase overall stability and shift their mindset. Pathways to Progress sessions include self-assessment activities, instruction, and facilitated discussions. Meeting once a week for 6 weeks, this course supports participants as they learn the patterns of economic class, debt-to-income ratio, financial and emotional resources, hidden rules, the importance of language, social capital, and more to build stability and get “unstuck” from tyranny of the moment thinking, and start planning your future.
We meet women where they are and support them in creating their future stories through making peace with the past, identifying where they want to go in the future, and creating a clear plan of action with which to move forward. All graduates leave the class with a personal economic action plan for success and a stipend to help put their plan into action.
Note: Prior “Getting Ahead” Graduates are not eligible for this program.
Next Session:
Private Session at Underground Railroad in Saginaw
More to come in 2025!
Pathways to Progress
“Thank you for the amazing class and motivation. [This program] literally gave me a second chance at the life and career I want to have. This means the world to me and my children because I get to better their lives as well.”
Staying Ahead
Staying Ahead is a FREE community resource offered to the graduates of our Women’s Economic Empowerment Program. Building resources after Pathways to Progress or Moving Ahead requires support and consistency over time. Setbacks can occur and we are here to help you work through them by helping you connect to resources, reviewing resumes, or providing guidance! Staying Ahead offers continuing long-term support for women who graduated from Pathways to Progress and Moving Ahead with group meetings, one-on-one assistance, occasional workshops, and a quarterly newsletter and resource guide.
Joining Staying Ahead is an opportunity to be connected with other graduates and our Facilitators, stay focused on your goals, revise and create new plans as circumstances change, work through challenges, strengthen skills needed to achieve your goals, connect with the community, share inspiration and encouragement, and celebrate progress along the way.
Young Women Choosing Action
Young Women Choosing Action is a FREE intersectional, culturally responsive, trauma-informed leadership program designed with the unique challenges and opportunities of low-income young women and young women of color, ages 13–19, in mind. Young Women Choosing Action will enable young women to practice skills and dispositions, which can lead to new habits of decision making rooted in an active choice rather than a reactive behavior.
Through participation in this program, young women who have had varying experiences with trauma, stress, and structural oppressions will develop leadership skills, expand their understanding of their physical and emotional responses to trauma, cultivate a practice of personal well-being, and build their capacity as leaders. Young women will learn how healthy decision-making, self-advocacy, and self-regulation support effective leadership.
Participants in Young Women Choosing Action will learn and practice real-world leadership skills by working together to identify and address an authentic community need. Mindfulness-based somatic exercises, such as yoga and breathing activities, will support their leadership efforts and personal empowerment. Ultimately, young women who complete the program will be empowered to effectively employ choice, mindfulness, and leadership strategies in a wide variety of life situations.
This program has previously hosted been hosted at First Ward Community Center and the Boys and Girls Club Saginaw Teen Center in Saginaw.
Young Women Choosing Action Social Justice Action Project - February 2023: Sexism Video Report
Young Women Choosing Action Social Justice Project - December 2023: Gender Inequality Video Report