Helping Hand is a weekly feature on HPR. Friday afternoons, it tries to put the spotlight on an organization or event in the community that offers assistance to the disabled and other folks in need. This week we’re learning about the Women’s Fund of Hawai‘i with our guest, Women’s Fund of Hawai‘i Executive Director, Leela Bilmes Goldstein.
This non-profit tries to address several key issues affecting women in the Aloha State – From their website, some of those areas include: Hawai’i having almost double the nation’s average proportion of women in prison; girls are arrested at a much higher rate in Hawai’i than anywhere else in the country; in Hawai’i, six teenage girls become pregnant every day; children born to teen parents are more likely to have a reported case of abuse or neglect; one in five women in Hawai’i are beaten by their partners; each month, one death in Hawai’i is due to domestic violence; as Hawai’i is a tourist & military hub, they note 13-14 year old girls are lured into prostitution, with 1 in 10 youth in Hawai’i reporting that someone tried to recruit them into commercial sexual exploitation; almost half of single women with children in Hawai’i are living in poverty; Hawai’i has the biggest “ice” (meth) rate in the nation, but only one residential treatment program in Hawai’i can accept a woman and only one of her children... These are some of the issues they focus on.
Contact the Women's Fund of Hawai'i:
Website:womensfundhawaii.org
Phone: (808) 439-6388
Find all the Helping Hand segments here.