This week CTLN Opinion+ had the opportunity to speak with Adrienne W. Cochrane, Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Hartford Region. Our main topic of conversation is the array of programs and services that YWCA offers to help women with families create opportunities to move ahead in life. Whether you need child care, affordable housing, financial literacy/security, or launch a career, YWCA will help you transform your life.
YWCA Hartford region’s mission is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. YWCA Hartford’s vision is to become a community with unlimited opportunities to un-limit opportunities. It promotes change at a systemic level and through improved lives for individuals and families in our community. Increasingly, the paramount theme is for every woman to achieve economic security.
Serving nearly 2,000 people annually, YWCA is helping women and girls bridge the educational, career, and financial gaps to prepare them for life-long stability and economic security.
So far, 350 people have attended the Denise L. Nappier Money Conference for women to learn how to better manage and invest their money in an effort to achieve financial security, a top-rated program offered by YWCA that was interrupted by Covid and will return next year.
We discussed how the pandemic disproportionately impacted and exacerbated the inequities that already existed in women. About 1 out of every five Latinas in the labor force now cannot find employment. “10.9 percent of the women live in poverty and that wage gap again that appears, you know we are all about gender equity and pay equity here at the YWCA Hartford region,” Adrienne said. Overall, women earn less and receive half the average pension benefits of men; thus, YWCA’s continuous commitment to supporting women gain economic security.
YWCA Hartford Region will continue to stand firm in its commitment to support the process of developing a strategic plan to work against the racism and inequities in the BIPOC communities.
To learn more about the YWCA Hartford region programs and services, go to https://www.ywcahartford.org
