"The women all helped each other and focused on their abilities, not their disabilities!"
-Diane Bergstrom, National Institute for the Study of Cognitive Sensorimotor Therapy, RYKA Fitness Grant recipient
Dear friends and supporters,
Thanks to supporters like you, the Women's Sports Foundation has reached a tipping point.
Our work has been honored by the International Olympic Committee, and we have earned consultative status from the United Nations and assisted in launching an international girls' sports initiative.
Each year we see more women athletes being honored and speaking at non-sport events, more advertisements showcasing women and girls moving and competing and more funders talking about programming directed towards girls' health and physical empowerment. Female athlete role models continue to shine and deliver hope, igniting the aspirations of young girls. Moms and dads are engaged in their daughters' sports experiences. Eighty percent of senior women in corporate America played sports, and new research shows athletes as more political and civic minded than their non-athlete peers. We know that sport is a social change agent, and more people in philanthropic and business circles are celebrating this concept as well.
The Women's Sports Foundation has worked for more than 30 years on public policy to increase participation opportunities and advance equal treatment of girls in sports, delivering an 847% increase in sports participation at the high school level and a 411% increase at the college level. Despite these increases, two out of three high school girls are sedentary or getting no more than 20 minutes of physical activity each week. More than 80% of high school and college athletic programs are not in compliance with Title IX, the federal law requiring gender equality in school and college sports. Parks and recreation and school boards at the local level are still struggling to ensure that girls have equal access and opportunity to facilities and programming. The female athlete is still being shortchanged.
There is still much work to be done, and the organization's leadership is eager to take on these challenges with your help. Over the past three years, the Board of Trustees has defined strategic and significant long-term projects to deliver results and visibility for the women's sports and health movement, including:
- the 2006 launch of a high-visibility celebrity media event in Los Angeles, The Billies, to celebrate women's sports media excellence and bring awareness to the inequity of women's sports media coverage
- the 2008 opening of the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center as an integral part of the new National Sports Museum in New York City to feature women in sports and allowing more than 800,000 visitors each year to learn about the organization and the history of the women's sports movement
- delivering our award-winning GoGirlGo! curriculum, grants and research with grassroots efforts to train and provide technical assistance to 1,000 girl-serving organizations annually in Atlanta, Chicago and, starting in 2006, San Antonio to increase sports opportunities and engage with more than 300,000 underserved girls in these cities from 2006-2008
- extending our public policy efforts to the local and state level to get schools to mandate recess for elementary school children, daily physical education for kindergarten through 12th grade and gender and disability equity in interscholastic and intercollegiate sports
- continuing our history of research excellence by establishing a series of biennial signature research reports, highlighting sports participation challenges, issues and opportunities
- the 2006 creation of a grassroots participation fundraising event, TEAM WSF, for local engagement, corporate support and branding
We welcome your consideration of supporting the organization through this incredible time of success and growth. With your help, more girls and women will be empowered by sports and physical activity.
Warm regards,
Donna A. Lopiano, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer
Dominique Dawes, President, Olympic Gold Medalist