The Women’s and Girls’ Fund is primarily a volunteer effort supported by Kern Community Foundation and guided by the leadership of the Vision Committee and Community Advisors. The assets of the Fund are professionally managed and invested by Kern Community Foundation, which also provides oversight of Fund grant decisions.

WE will transform the lives of women and girls in Kern County by mobilizing the power and passion of women working together.
• Women Educate to create awareness of women’s and girls’ needs unmet by current strategies.
• Women Endow a permanent fund whose annual yield supports programs benefitting women and girls throughout Kern County.
• Women Empower one another and our girls to become philanthropists and advocates of positive social change.

2023 Judi McCarthy Women’s Philanthropy Awardee – Stephanie Lynch
2023 Judi McCarthy Young Women’s Philanthropy Awardee – Jaiden Elyssa Bareng

2020 Report on the Status of Women and Girls in Kern County

This report is a true labor of love, compiled as a gift to our community by The Women’s and Girls Fund at Kern Community Foundation. Only published once every five years, the latest report is hot off the presses!

Click here or on the image above to read the Full Report;

or

Click here to read the Executive Summary.

Grantmaking

2023 Grantees

$14,000 – Open Door Network:  Teen Mothers Transcending. The funding will launch a pilot project to assist five teen mothers in Kern County by removing barriers to education. Teen mothers will be able to return to the classroom because they will have childcare, study hall, and life skills training to help them achieve their educational goals.

$25,000—The Mission at Kern County: From Bondage to Empowerment. The funding will provide ongoing support for a continuing program of The Mission—the transitional housing program for women with children. Women living in homelessness and addiction can bring their children into transitional housing after they spend one year in the Lee and Krystyna Jamieson Recovery Home for Women and Children. At the transitional housing unit, they are provided life skills training and vocational training, through Bakersfield College’s Project Hire-Up, which trains for living wage jobs.

$25,000—United Way of Kern County: Professional Development Internship Program. The funding will support two interns working at United Way as they develop the office and advocacy skills necessary to obtain a living wage job at a local nonprofit agency.

$19,000—Global Family Care Network: Fostering Academic Futures for High-Risk Foster Youth: This grant will fund supplies and equipment for the learning lab and salaries for tutors at the Daughter Project Girls Home, which is a Short Term Residential Treatment Facility for commercially sexually exploited girls.

Please click on this link to access the WGF’s Grantmaking Page designed to help potential applicants learn about grant eligibility criteria, current grant cycle dates and how to apply.

Grow Our Giving: A Call to Action!

A strong endowment will ensure that The Women’s and Girls’ Fund will make an impact in Kern County in perpetuity. Your gift to The Women’s and Girls’ Fund is combined with hundreds of others and is carefully invested to achieve long term growth.

Looking forward, we increase community impact if we GROW OUR GIVING, our new fundraising call to action.

The principles of The Women’s and Girls’ Fund are that: Women Educate, Women Endow, and Women Empower….with the foundational belief that we transform the lives of women and girls in Kern County by mobilizing the power and passion of women working together. When our endowment grows, our giving grows and creates larger, more impactful grants that provide opportunities to directly affect some of the root causes impacting women and girls, thereby creating lasting and sustainable change within our community for generations to come.

Ready to get involved?

Get started and donate online now. Donations may be made by personal or business check or by credit card (transaction fee applied). For more information, or if you have any questions, please write to us at WGF@kernfoundation.org. Follow us on Facebook at The Women’s and Girls’ Fund at Kern Community Foundation (Facebook.com/WGFKCF).