Minnesota African Womens Association

MAWA's African Women's Employment Program and more

Dear Friend and Partner,

Another Give to the Max Day is coming up on November 12, and MAWA would love your support especially for our women's employment program!

This program has expanded to include other services as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the unrest recently experienced in the Twin Cities area. In fact, our numbers have practically doubled.

With county and city staff working from home, our participants have resorted to bringing all their needs to MAWA staff persons. We now also assist with filling application forms for housing, health care, reading and responding to email as well as helping with job searches. 

With a strong track record of 15+ years, MAWA goals are to empower Pan-African women and girls to advance community integration, positive development, educational and career achievement, and economic self-sufficiency. The African Women’s Employment Program (AWE) has provided comprehensive employment services leading to greatly improved job opportunities and self-sufficiency for over 1000 Twin Cities’ African women and their families (150 women annually when fully funded). In a period of 3 years, MAWA produced 219 Certified Nursing Assistants, thanks to scholarship provided by a funder.

Our impact on the lives of African teenagers is also testimony to the essence of our work. The African Girls Initiative for Leadership and Empowerment Program (AGILE) is a highly successful youth development, parent involvement, and school-to-college success program serving 120 Pan-African refugee/immigrant teen girls annually when at full strength with the outcome of all 137 high school senior participants attending college since 2010.  This is a remarkable reversal of the hitherto elevated high-school drop-out rate statistics for African girls in the Twin Cities and the low-college attendance recorded before.

MAWA’s African Girls Initiative for Leadership and Empowerment, AGILE, program is the largest and only college attendance-focused and leadership development after-school program for young African girls run by an African-led organization in the Twin Cities. MAWA’s AGILE program became more college focused in 2010 because of the low rate of college attendance among African girls who were not well prepared and ready for college after graduating from high school. Culture-shock, a general unawareness of the college attendance process and uninformed parents were just some of the barriers to the girls attending college. Since the college component was added to the AGILE program there has been a huge increase in the number of African girls attending and completing college – remarkably all seniors who are members of the AGILE program every year now go on to college. A huge contributor to the program's success are the college preparation workshops and visits.

The current pandemic has affected African women so much that we want to focus our fundraising appeal this year on the employment program. Help and donate to MAWA to help support our employment program which goes beyond offering job search and training opportunities but also responds to the well-being and wellness concerns of our participants.

Don’t delay! Visit giveMN.org to schedule your donation today.

MAWA's mission is to promote the health and well-being of African refugee and immigrant women and their families in the Twin Cities area.

Log on to www.giveMN.org anytime on November 14 and make a gift of $10, $25, $100, or $1,000.