Austin Community Foundation and United Way for Greater Austin co-hosted a panel on May 12th, “Gentrification & Gender: How Austin’s Changing Neighborhoods Affect Women and Children.” The panel was put on for both organizations’ women’s groups, UWATX’s Women’s Leadership Council and ACF’s Women’s Fund of Central Texas. Panel speakers were Dr. Eric Tang and Dr. Victor Sáenz of the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Tang is an assistant professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at UT. His research revealed that Austin was the only major growing city in the United States to experience an absolute numerical decline in African Americans. Dr. Tang is currently working on a book, East Avenue: African Americans in Austin’s Terrain of Inequality. Dr. Sáenz is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the educational success of boys and young men of color. Dr. Sáenz has developed a successful mentoring program for Latino boys in Austin ISD schools and created a statewide consortium to share best practices. He sees the educational success of boys as key to creating healthy families and communities. The panel started with a video from an Austin-American Statesman project on economic mobility in Austin. The video does a great job of describing how the history of segregation in Austin has led us to the current state of East Austin today. Dr. Tang elaborated on some troubling statistics from the most recent censuses in Austin. Austin is the only major city in the […]
Read MoreVolunteer Spotlight: Rina Patel
Rina Patel was first introduced to the United Way of Greater Austin more than 10 years ago through her position as the Wells Fargo area president for Mid-Central Texas. Upon moving to Austin in 2013, UWATX VP of Mission Advancement Dr. Leah Meunier, who then was in charge of managing our Women’s Leadership Council (WLC), met with Rina to introduce her to the giving society. “I have remained a WLC member because I am passionate about helping our youth—particularly through early childhood education— and ensuring they are set up for success,” said Patel. “The program also offers the opportunity for motivated, passionate, community-minded women to network and collaborate for a great cause. In particular, I’ve enjoyed the WLC meetings because the team always comes up with creative ways to educate everyone about important topics that need to be addressed in Austin.” Rina is also a dedicated volunteer and appreciates that Wells Fargo is invested in giving back to our community as a corporation as well. She finds that volunteering with her team members by sharing the expertise they already have is one of the best ways to give back. Wells Fargo’s Austin team has an impressive volunteer track record. More than 495 Wells Fargo Austin team members have volunteered more than 11, 500 hours and supported 695 nonprofit organizations through these projects. This includes 100 team members serving on local nonprofit boards, building three homes for families in need over 13 days and raising more than $325,000 last year to […]
Read MoreInternational Women’s Day Spotlight: Amy Green-Hinojosa
Today is International Women’s Day, a day where women around the world are celebrated for their social, economic, cultural and political achievements. The origins of this day date back to 1908, when female oppression and inequality inspired women to become more vocal and active about gaining better pay and voting rights. We now celebrate this day globally in various ways, ranging from festivals, concerts, female-driven tech conferences and more. This year, we are celebrating by highlighting one of UWATX’s longtime female supporters, Amy Green-Hinojosa. Not only is Amy a dedicated Women’s Leadership Council member, but she is also an Employee Campaign Leader at her workplace, Texas Mutual. As an Employee Campaign Leader, Amy plays a critical role in leading and inspiring her co-workers and employees to give back to our community through campaign. It is investors, volunteers and community leaders like Amy, and their continuous support, that allow our organization to thrive and make Austin greater. We took some time to chat with Amy about her background and involvement with UWATX and why she is invested in this community. How long have you been involved with United Way and in what capacities? I have been contributing to United Way since I began my adult career, first in California, then here in Texas. I have been an ECL many times in my career. I was active in the Austin Young Leaders Society in my younger days ,and then I transitioned to the WLC. I served on the Executive Committee of WLC for a few […]
Read MoreDonor Champions United Way After Receiving Years of Support
Lisa Suarez is the campaign leader for UPS, as well as a leadership giver and Women’s Leadership Council member. While every donor has a different reason driving them to give, Lisa’s longstanding relationship with United Way has transformed over time uniquely, as she started as a services recipient before turning into a donor. Lisa grew up in a low-income family that moved frequently due to the financial hardships they were faced with. “It really is a vicious cycle. I was never encouraged to go to college even though I was a straight ‘A’ student. That’s just not the priority in low-income neighborhoods…just living day to day is the priority, so most people don’t have the means or even the knowledge to encourage their kids to try to do more and break the cycle. As your grow up, you do what you are familiar with and begin to look for jobs that just get you by. You do what you’ve grown up seeing from your parents–the minimum–because that’s all they knew too.” “My life would have been completely different without United Way. It’s afforded me a life that I didn’t come from and didn’t think was possible for me, and I looked back and realized United Way got me where I am today. I haven’t reached all of my goals in life yet, but now I know that I’m capable of doing it–and I didn’t know that before.” –Lisa Suarez “People think those in need aren’t trying for themselves. When you […]
Read MoreFall Day of Caring 2015
Our annual Fall Day of Caring took place last week on September 11th, in conjunction with the National Day of Service and Remembrance. We could not think of a better way to remember this day than by giving back to our community, and neither could the hundreds of volunteers who joined us. This year, volunteers gave back what equates to more than $80,000 worth of work in just one day! More than 1,000 volunteers spent the day giving back at 40 projects across the city, including gardening projects, clean ups, assembling materials for our programs and sprucing up afterschool and Pre-K sites. Many of the volunteers came from our corporate partners, who utilized the day to not only give back but as a great opportunity for team-building. Team members from GM and UPS assembled materials for our Play To Learn program and loaded tablets for low-income families with educational apps and parent resources. Austin Coca-Cola assisted our funded partner BookSpring with sorting books. Rockwell Automation, PBK Architects, Aspen Heights, Build-a-Sign and Liquidation Channel teamed up to prep Creative Action for their variety of youth programs. Freescale employees worked on a variety of projects at Girlstart, the Empty Bowl Project and the Capital Area Food Bank. Farmers Insurance worked at Blackland Community Development Corporation. UWATX’s Women’s Leadership Council, a group of our most invested women donors dedicated to our early childhood education work, spent the day at El Buen Pastor organizing the resource room. JE Dunn and Advisory Board Company worked on improving the playground […]
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