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Dear CEC Coalition Members, Conversation Leaders, and Friends:
Welcome to the August/September issue of the Caring Economy Campaign (CEC) newsletter. We're celebrating Women's Equality Day as well as the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington this month and with Labor Day just around the corner, please join the CEC to advance the rights and undervalued work of women and people of color. Also, please consider supporting our work with your most generous donation at this pivotal time in the movement for a more just and robust economy. You will see many more reasons to support the work of CPS and the CEC as you read on ...
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| PUBLIC POLICY: FAMILY ACT TO BE INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS
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This fall, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will introduce a proposal to safeguard the economic security of workers and family caregivers when a new child is born, a family member needs care to address a serious health condition or a worker needs to care for themselves. The proposed FAMILY Act legislation would create a self-sustaining national family and medical leave insurance program modeled on successful family leave insurance programs in California, New Jersey, and now Rhode Island, which provide affordable family leaves for workers who need time away from their jobs for family and medical reasons. The Caring Economy Campaign, along with the National Partnership for Women & Families, the Center for American Progress and many other organizations are working together to create a robust, diverse and inclusive coalition to support this important proposal and are looking for support and participation from national, state and local organizations. Join the effort today! Learn more by visiting this fact sheet about the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act). |
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 | LEADERSHIP AND LEARNING PROGRAMS |
Caring Economy Leadership Program
The Caring Economy Leadership Program just celebrated two more cohort graduations this Summer, including the first ever Young Leaders Cohort - an astonishingly brave and articulate group of young people aged 16 - 30 who have already hosted highly successful caring economy conversations and are planning many more. We now have certified more than 130 leaders in 16 different countries - all working to stimulate the mind shift that creates readiness for change toward caring economies.
One summer participant called CELP "an inspiring learning experience, the best online training I've been involved with yet!" - John Creger.
Through our new Alumni in Action Series, our graduates are beginning to organize into collaborative work groups to lead change in specific fields, including healthcare, education, media and the arts, community-level activism, and advocacy for the earth. We look forward to adding work groups in leadership and organizational change and social enterprise next year.
Our two Fall cohorts are now forming, and there are still spaces in both. Cohort T begins September 26th, and the fall Weekend Intensive cohort will begin October 26th.
Learn More | Register
 The Caring Economy Starter Course is a free lunch-hour webinar that introduces the foundational concepts of Caring Economics and offers an opportunity to ask questions and talk with Riane Eisler, Kimberly Otis, Caring Economy Campaign Director, and Sara Saltee, Director of Leadership and Learning Programs. Upcoming Starter Courses: September 4th and October 9th. 
We are delighted to be bringing back the popular Cultural Transformation Master Class with Riane Eisler this October. The online course includes five class discussion sessions with Riane Eisler, four exclusive videos with accompanying study guides, and covers 30 years of groundbreaking insights on how the new social categories of domination and partnership systems - first introduced in her best-seller The Chalice and the Blade - empower us to co-create a better future for ourselves, our children, and generations to come. Due to the popularity of this course, we are offering two ways to participate.
Learn more and Register.
Coming Soon!
We're excited to announce a new, 5-part online course focusing on Cultural Transformation in Healthcare settings. The course is currently being developed by Certified Caring Economy Conversation Leader Julie Kennedy-Oehlert, with LLP Director Sara Saltee. The course explores the implications of the partnership model and caring economy framework for the urgently needed changes in healthcare organizations and healthcare education. The course will launch in Spring, 2014 - stay tuned!
For more information about any of the leadership and learning programs, please contact: Ann Amberg
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| COALITION & MOVEMENT-BUILDING |
Over 112 organizations and leaders representing 14 million people have joined the CEC coalition. Partners include women's, children's, civil and human rights, and mothers' organizations, socially responsible businesses, faith-based, think tanks, labor, and environmental groups. Please join the CEC coalition today!The CEC website at www.caringeconomy.org features a blog with contributions from CEC leaders and we are now reaching thousands through Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and email blasts. Please join the conversation! We invite you to feature these postings on your sites and newsletters, and to let us hear of your caring economy related activities so we can feature them on our website and social media. Please join the conversation! |
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CALL TO ACTION: HELP LAUNCH NEW CPS WEBSITE: SAIV.ORG on 9/17/2013
| The CEC's sister program at the Center for Partnership Studies is the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV), which engages spiritual and cultural leaders, policy makers, and activists to join the movement to end the global pandemic of violence against women and children. SAIV was co-founded by Dr. Riane Eisler and Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams in 2004, and together they assembled a Global Council of religious, political and scientific leaders from all major religions on five continents providing a moral voice to "breaking cycles of violence in families - and the family of nations."
On September 17th, the new www.saiv.org will officially launch with a media campaign, press releases, and widespread postings on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. To date, resources on the site include the new Domestic Violence and Religion special collection of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, Dr. Eisler's videos for teaching and discussion about moving from domination to partnership systems, the "Caring and Connected Parenting Guide" by Licia Rando and endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Desmond Tutu and Betty Williams and pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, and much more to come soon. Please look for notices in the coming weeks about www.saiv.org and help us to make a big splash with this launch on September 17th!
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 | MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: FAMILY VALUES AT WORK |
Interview with Wendy Chun-Hoon, Washington, DC Director
When was your organization founded?
Family Values @ Work (FV@W) was founded ten years ago in 2003. California had just passed the first state paid family leave legislation. Seven other states were working on similar policy proposals, which prompted the need for forming a "think tank network" to share research, policy strategies, and pooled funding sources. Ellen Bravo, who anchored the coalition in Wisconsin, Netsy Firestein, whose California coalition had just won paid family leave, and Marilyn Watkins, from Washington, began coordinating peer-to peer learning strategies and formed what would eventually become the Family Values @ Work consortium of state-based coalitions.
What is your mission?
FV@W is today a national network of 21 state and local coalitions representing over 1000 groups building the movement for family-friendly workplace policies such as paid sick days and family leave insurance. Too many people have to risk their job to care for a loved one, or put a family member at risk to keep a job. We're made to feel that this is a personal problem, but it's political - family values too often end at the workplace door. We need new workplace standards to meet the needs of real families today. The result will be better individual and public health, and greater financial security for families, businesses, and the nation.
Why are you involved as a coalition member of the Caring Economy Campaign?
FV@W seeks to share its successful strategies for state and local policies in support of paid sick days and paid family leave with the members of the CEC coalition. Recent wins include Rhode Island's Temporary Caregivers Insurance law in July, joining California and New Jersey with paid family leave policies. FV@W was instrumental in getting key business leaders to join as champions of the legislation, along with groups representing children, seniors, labor, and women's organizations. In terms of paid sick days, recent gains in Portland, OR, New York City, Seattle and Connecticut also offer important lessons learned.
Moreover, FV@W seeks to leverage the important work of the CEC at the national and international levels to make the campaign more visible and real at the state and local levels. While the CEC uses the power of indicators to show how our future national economy is in jeopardy, if we can also make the case for new measures at the state and local levels, it will strengthen the work of both FV@W and the CEC. What are some of the biggest challenges facing your constituents today and what are you doing to address them?
Our biggest challenge is to break the "identity theft" when corporate lobbyists attempt to speak on behalf of small businesses across the country who are members of our local coalitions and are championing these reforms. One of our biggest opportunities is to elevate the perspectives of neighborhood businesses who understand that "your employee is my customer and if they get fired or lose wages when they need to stay home sick, I lose business."
Our strength stems from the fact that the vast majority of Americans support common sense policies like paid sick days and family leave insurance. Most people believe that nobody should be fired for getting sick or demoted for having a child or tending an ailing parent. These are basic rights.
What are some upcoming activities that people in the Caring Economy Campaign should know about? Please visit our website to see how you can get involved, see what is happening in your state, and please sign up and stay connected! CEC members are also welcome to contact Wendy directly for more information at [email protected]. Each newsletter features a Q&A with a CEC member organization. If you would like to suggest an organization to be featured in an upcoming issue, please email [email protected].
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 | DATA POINTS |
- African American women working full-time are paid only 64 cents, and Latinas only 55 cents, for every dollar paid to white men, according to this fact sheet from the National Women's Law Center.
- The Washington Post reports that Head Start has eliminated 57,000 slots for vulnerable children so far due to sequestration.
- For Women's Equality Day, Think Progress offers six policies that would make women economically equal to men
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The Caring Economy Campaign is a project of the Center for Partnership Studies.
The mission of the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS) is to accelerate movement to partnership systems of human rights and nonviolence, gender and racial equity, economic prosperity, and a sustainable environment through research, education, grassroots empowerment, and policy initiatives.
Please provide a generous donation to the essential work of CPS, the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence and the Caring Economy Campaign today! Individual donor support is crucial for our success, and we invite you to partner with our growing movement.
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