About Redevelopment Opportunities for Women...
CORE EXPERTISE
Since the founding of ROW, the organization has developed expertise in working with women who have been impacted by poverty, homelessness, and/or intimate partner violence. Poverty, gender, and violence are often interconnected for the families utilizing our services. ROW focuses on the economic and social context in which women find themselves and builds upon their current strengths as women and as parents. It has become clear to us that understanding the unique interconnections between poverty and gender are critical to providing the most successful intervention services.
- ROW’s participants are the poorest of the poor—the majority are low-income families who are unemployed, have no home of their own, and are coping with both poverty and domestic violence.
- In 2007, ROW provided services to more than 875 families in the St. Louis area. Programs include family literacy, life skills education, domestic violence counseling, financial literacy, individual development accounts, and community consulting.
MISSION
ROW's mission is to empower women and their families to build skills, economic security, personal safety, and hope for the future. ROW has carried out its mission through a variety of programs that create a foundation where women are able to develop the necessary skills and abilities to begin to take control of their lives. Services are focused on serving women who have been impacted by intimate partner violence, homelessness and/or poverty.
VISION STATEMENT
ROW will be locally and nationally recognized for assisting women and their families, with limited options, to achieve a stable and hopeful life. It will also be recognized for its contributions to identifying pathways to personal and economic security for women.
VALUES STATEMENT
ROW is committed to assisting women reach their potential and build a hopeful future for themselves and their families. We serve women whose opportunities for advancement are often limited. We respect the women we serve and demonstrate this through flexibility and we integrate knowledge gained from clients into our delivery of services. We also believe it is important to communicate what we are learning about how to assist women with others engaged in similar work and to increase the field’s capacity.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
- In 2005, Oprah Winfrey, in her “Live Your Best Life Tour” nationally recognized ROW as 1 of 4 organizations for their hard work and effectiveness in the community.
- ROW was one of three local partners in the Starbucks Coffee Foundation Mark McGuire’s Out of the Park, Into the Books national literacy campaign.
- In May of 2006, ROW was the winner of the inaugural Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC) through Washington University Skandalaris Center. The competition was designed to foster growth for social entrepreneurs who craft innovative processes, approaches, and solutions to help resolve social issues. ROW was one of this years winners and received an Incarnate Word $30,000 Award to help launch the recently established REAP Training Institute. The REAP Training Institute has been established to train domestic violence advocates with the knowledge and skills needed to increase the economic empowerment of women experiencing domestic violence.
- In 2007, ROW’s Economic Action Program (REAP) was selected as a winner of a FOCUS St. Louis “What’s Right With The Region” award in the category of Demonstrating Innovative Solutions. The FOCUS St. Louis awards are given to organizations that are making a significant and positive difference in our community.