WIC Provides Checks to Buy PA Produce

Families enrolled in the state’s Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program are eligible to receive voucher checks for Pennsylvania farmers markets.

Each WIC-enrolled individual can receive four checks worth a total of $20. The money is valid only at markets registered in the state’s Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and is meant to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to families with young children.

Allegheny County Health Department spokesman Guillermo Cole says there are more than 50 registered markets in Allegheny County, but the checks are valid in other counties’ markets as well.

The WIC program runs from June through November of this year. Cole says it helps out both families hoping to eat healthy and farmers who need to sell their crops.

A complete list of authorized farmers markets is available on the Health Department's website.

Group Marks National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

For nearly a decade, the fastest growing HIV/AIDS population has been women and the Pittsburgh based group, Educating Teens About HIV/AIDS, is hoping three events this month will do something about it. March 10th is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Educating Teens About HIV/AIDS will gather some 100 women tonight to show a documentary, hold a discussion and draw up a wide sweeping action plan. “Encourage each of us to encourage each other to be cognizant of what is going on and to protect themselves…. and what we can do individually to prevent HIV/AIDS, to encourage other people to become educated about HIV, to encourage everyone to work with teens and young adults,” says Educating Teens About HIV/AIDS Project Director Albertha Graham.

Later this month Graham and her group will take their message to younger women with the 11th annual HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Graham says in the past as many as 300 teens have come to the daylong event. This year’s event will be held March 29. Graham says to help accommodate teens that cannot get away from school that day they are holding a second event the night before. Registration for both events is still open. Graham says the region’s youth seem to be open to talking about HIV/AIDS, “The tricky part is getting adults involved in the process, understanding the need to educate our students and our teens and the more we work with teens the more we realize they are receptive and they really don’t want to contract the disease.” Graham says teens seem to be a bit less afraid of HIV than they were a few decades ago. She says to help combat that, her group usually brings in a person living with AIDS to talk about how hard it is to live with the disease.

Women’s Day Celebrated on Bridge

A small group of women gathered at noon Tuesday on the Clemente Bridge to mark International Women’s Day with signs and a petition. This is the 100th annual International Women’s Day celebration and the second time it has been celebrated with the “join me on the bridge” effort sponsored by Women for Women International. Local Organizer Munah Pavlik says women gathered on bridges in cities around the world today. “Women are builders of peace, women build bridges of peace so all around the world women are gathering on bridges to highlight that women are peace builders,” says Pavlik.

The group in Pittsburgh was especially trying to draw attention to the women of Afghanistan. “By the end of the year the NATO forces and the American Forces are going to be leaving Afghanistan and we want to make sure that these women have a voice in the peace process.” Pavlik says she worries that all of the freedoms Afghani women have gained in recent years will be lost following the transition.

Pavlik adds war torn regions are especially dangerous for women. “75-percent of the civilians killed in war are women and children, civilians now account for more than 70-percent of casualties in conflicts,” says Pavlik. She says that means it is more dangerous to be a woman in a war torn country than it is to be a solider.

Pavlik says she hopes to expand to more bridges next year.

Nonprofits Gather to Fight Federal Spending Cuts

The Women’s and Girls Foundation of Pittsburgh gathered a long list of nonprofits Thursday morning to outline how they would be impacted by the federal spending cuts contained in H.R. 1. The continuing resolution has been passed by the House and is awaiting Senate debate.

All of the groups at the event boast some sort of tie to the welfare of women and children. Among them was Adagio Health CEO Rick Baird. His group gets federal “Population Research and Voluntary Family Planning Programs” funding which is better known as Title X funding. He says cutting those funds is a bad choice socially because low income women will not be able to get the OB GYN and reproductive care they need and a bad choice economically as well. “For every dollar spent in Title X, $3.75 are saved in Medicaid dollars the next year,” says Baird. He says H.R. 1 will cut $317 million from Title X. “It’s stupid financially.”

Women and Girls Foundation CEO Heather Arnet says the budget cuts will come down harder on women and children, especially single working mothers. “The phrase ‘women and children first’ used to mean in an emergency these groups should be the ones first given the life boats to safety, it did not men in a crisis throw the women and children overboard,” says Arnet.

The heads of each group took their turn behind the lectern to outline how the cuts would impact them financial and in terms of service. Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children Executive Director Michelle Figler warned of massive cuts the Head Start and Early Head Start. “In Pennsylvania 7,000 Head Start children will lose services. Locally more than 30 class rooms will be cut,” says Figler. She says that means more than 300 children will no longer have a classroom to sit in and more than 50 teachers will no longer have jobs if the cuts go through.

“We have a two year sort of waiting list for many of the subsidized housing that’s available to us,” says Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh Director of Enforcement Jay Drowin, “by cutting these programs is keep people is keep people on the streets for longer periods of time. Is this the kind of country we want to be?”

Also speaking at the event was Maggie Jensen of the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh says the senate needs to think about the message the cuts will send to the world. She quoted Vice President Hubert Humphrey who said, “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”