Showing posts with label Economic Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic Security. Show all posts

August 3, 2021

Black Women's Equal Pay Day

According to Fortune Magazine, the average Black woman will have finally earned the same amount the average non-Hispanic white man earned a year earlier—eight months later. That’s a problem, not just for Black women who lose out on $900,000 in lifetime earnings, but for everyone.

Black women who normally are the heads of their households (i.e., primary breadwinners) earn 63 cents of every dollar a white man makes. Shannon Williams, director of Equal Pay Today - a project of Equal Rights Advocates stated, "The issue of equal pay is not just a woman’s issue because it trickles down into our families, communities, and the overall economy."

The Black Women’s Wage Gap is a problem for everyone, but everyone isn’t working to address it! One way to close the wage gap is to close the skill gap. The SOFEI Group is working to decrease pay inequity among women of color through free professional, technical, and certification training for women who want to upgrade their skills to elevate their earnings! Please visit our website to view and purchase our NOMORE64 merchandise to empower women to take control of their skills and earning potential!

July 23, 2021

Don't Live Within Your Means

Living within your means is well-intended advice to prevent people from acquiring debt. But could this advice prevent individuals from believing and achieving a bigger and better life?

Mean among many definitions is average. Living outside your means spiritually, emotionally, and socially can lead to an extraordinary life. Here’s how:
  • Write your big dreams and read them daily
  • Create a vision board with images that coincide with your dreams
  • Review, envision, and mediate daily of you achieving your dreams
  • Surround yourself with people who have what you desire
  • Strive for purpose and not security
  • Live by faith and not fear

June 24, 2021

Getting Unstuck

Where are you? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? These are the questions a technical instructor asked to help trainees learn how to change directories using DOS (i.e., Disk Operating System).

Post-DOS days, the technical instructor realized these questions apply to our everyday lives, and we believe these questions can help individuals get unstuck in their careers, relationships, or finances. If you feel stuck, click here and download our guide that can help you get unstuck.

April 4, 2019

Choose Yourself

Industrialized jobs have depleted in America, and if you want to stay afloat in today’s economy, you need skills that people want and what they’re willing to pay for. Essentially, your work will be based on your key strengths, accomplishments, self-marketing, connections and your performance. And that’s authentic connections, not pretentious ones to simply make a sale or to gain a client.

Social media is falsifying some efforts to connect. Some people think they’re gaining connections based on their followers. If followers aren’t being acknowledged or valued, there’s no connection. But information sharing to an audience that can relate to their content.

The realities of today’s workforce have changed. Job security no longer exists, and safe careers are simply a myth. To achieve a successful career, entrepreneurial (i.e., always exploring opportunities) skills are a must. You have to rely on your inner resources to be self-managing to plan and execute your own career. No one can do this for you; the only security you can depend on is your ability to market yourself through the ups and downs of this work climate.

Be a careerist! Learn how to navigate through the changing landscape of work, know what you have to sell, know how to live with uncertainty, and have optimism and belief in yourself.

April 2, 2019

Security

  • Security can be obtained from God’s everlasting arms.
  • God is our best security system from past, present, and future sins.
  • God is our security from life’s storms because He is our refuge.
  • Security is dwelling and abiding in the presence of God.
  • Security is knowing that God is our rock, our fortress, and deliverer in the time of trouble.
  • Security is the confidence that God is always near, and He will never leave nor forsake us.
  • Security is the Sovereignty of God because He has all things under His divine power and control.
  • Security is in God’s omniscience because He knows all things.
  • Security is in God’s word because it will not return to Him void.
  • Eternal security is the belief and knowledge that salvation belongs to Jesus Christ.

June 12, 2017

How We Get Here?

Having access to statistics about the status of women (especially minority) is great. However, it would be even better if women of color would use data to collaborate and harness their power to change the trajectory of the economic conditions that lingers among women of color.

Over the next few months, The SOFEI Group will host community forums addressing the question, How We Get Here? to discover the underlying causes that negatively impact the lives of women throughout the Washington region. We will seek and encourage input from the community-at-large, social change agents, politicians, spiritual leaders, and subject matter experts. Following are topics we will discuss during the forums:
  1. How We Get Here? – Why black women and their issues are ignored in politics? - Source: Status of Black Women in Politics
  2. How We Get Here? – Black women 16 years and over has experienced the highest unemployment rate among all other ethnic groups since 2007. - Source: The African American Labor Force in Recovery
  3. How We Get Here? – Black women are more likely to have children outside of marriage than other racial or ethnic groups. - Source: Congressional Research Service
  4. How We Get Here? – Women and Violence – 1 out of 5 women is sexually assaulted in college. Source: insidehighered.com
  5. How We Get Here? - Women Living with HIV and AIDS - Source: CDC.gov
  6. How We Get Here? - Women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished in retirement. - Source: National Institute on Retirement
  7. How We Get Here? - Women of Color are more likely to suffer with depression. - Source: Huffingtonpost.com
Click here if you would like to join us as a speaker or panelist, and here as a community forum participant.

June 9, 2017

Allow People to Grow

Women of color spend a great deal of time tending to the needs of immediate and extended family members to prevent them from dealing with the consequences of their choices. Women will:
  • Mortgage their homes to prevent a loved one from going to jail.
  • Expend their retirement to prevent foreclosure or pay for college.
  • Become a custodian to their abandoned or neglected grandchildren.
  • Decrease their savings to pay their children’s expenses to keep their lives afloat.
Stepping in to tend to the needs of family members every time they experience a set-back, doesn’t help them become accountable or responsible for their choices. It teaches them to stay on the path of self-destruction because they know they have access to a reliable source that will catch them before they fall.

Every one can’t be saved from the consequences of their choices. Part of the growth and healing process is to learn from the error of our ways. So if they’re old enough to get into a ‘pickle’ let them grow up to get out of it.

July 19, 2016

Poverty is Colorblind

When you hear the word poverty, what's the first image you see or your first thought? Women and children in an impoverished country or women with polished nails holding a sign for help? If you could help a group of women living with poverty, which group would you choose and why?

Poverty is more than having more bills at the end of the month than money. It's extreme, situational, institutional, or generational; making it difficult to create pathways to economic independence, wealth, and stability.

When we seek support or investment in our work to decrease the trend of poverty amongst women throughout the Washington region, we often receive a plethora of reasons of why we shouldn't help them because their level of poverty isn't as severe as women experiencing poverty in other countries. A local pastor stated, You haven't seen poverty until you've been to a country where people have to drink and bathe in dirty water. Now, that's poverty. What we have here (i.e., in the U.S.), isn't poverty. Does this mean we should negate our efforts to help women and children experiencing poverty in the U.S. if they have access to clean water?

When our lives are threatened by a disease, we collaborate our energy and resources to find a cure, or a way to stop it from spreading. We don't assess if one disease deserves more attention than the other because of the impact the disease may have on all humanity.

Ignoring the plight of poverty will not eradicate it, but heighten it because poverty affects all ethnicities and nationalities.

July 12, 2016

Equal, But Different

When women stop seeking validation and approval from men, their equity will grow. Some women dress seductively for men. Wear heels for the approval of men. Buy hair and make-up for men. Quit their jobs for men. Surrender their will to men who don't surrender their will to God. Live under the pretense that man knows what's best instead of God.

Should women who live subjectively to men expect equal treatment?

According to Genesis 1:26, God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and to let them have dominion over every living thing that creeps on the earth. And, according to Genesis 1:27, "God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

These verses share how God equally created men and women in His image to have dominion over the earth in our own distinctive roles. If women grasp hold of this knowledge, maybe women will seek equality through the Image of God instead of man.

December 2, 2014

Invest in yourself

"I only take classes my job pays for."

"If my company wants me to stay, they should pay for my training."

"As soon as I get my MBA, I’m out of here!"

"I only enroll in workshops or classes that are free."

If your company pays for training, who’s investing in your professional development, you or your company? If your company pays, what do they get in return? If you pay, what’s the ROI (Return on Investment) for your growth and development?

Imagine hiring a contracting company that specializes in home renovations showing up at your doorstep without the skills, tools, or resources to perform the job. Would you pay for the training and resources the contracting company needs to complete the job? Or, would you hire another contracting company equipped with resources and expertise to meet your requirements and deadline to renovate?

Corporations are discovering better ways to yield returns on their resources and investments. And unfortunately, this doesn’t include ‘human’ capital because too many corporations have witnessed and experienced their education and training investments walk out the door.

If your career has come to a screeching halt, evaluate where you invest most of your time and money. If you plan to excel in your current or future place of employment, you have to transition to self-directed and life-long learners. The library is replete with ‘free’ resources for professional or career development and some organizations are replete with ‘fee-based’ resources. The resource you choose would be based on what you’re trying to achieve and why?

Education has been recognized as an integral path to economic empowerment and wealth. Not designer bags, shoes, or acrylic nails. If you’ve been blessed with these things great! But, if you invest more in these things than yourself, evaluate how these things have positioned you to create the foundation to your financial independence and stability?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “We buy what we want and beg for what we need”. Education is a needed commodity to evolve and thrive in today’s society and your growth will be measured by what you endow to yourself.

October 23, 2014

We Plunged

Right into doing something we’ve never done before – host a Zumbathon® Charity Event! Since we’ve been out of the lime-light, we thought hosting a Zumbathon® would be a fun way to reconnect with friends and supporters, and make new ones.

We’ve supported Zumbathon® events to benefit heart disease and ovarian cancer. And one-year later we’re hosting our own to benefit women experiencing poverty in the Washington region.

The Zumba® Corporate Office approved our Zumbathon® Charity Event within two-hours of submission - a process that normally takes two-business days, and within four-weeks, only 10% of our desired participants have registered.

Lesson learned, we’re doing something we’ve never done before and its success can’t be measured solely on who showed up; but, on our commitment to work and move the weight of poverty off the shoulders of women who live with it daily right in our backyard.

Not achieving the desired results from this plunge will not stop us from doing it again. Poverty is growing, and we do not have time to be stagnated by fear, skepticism, or resistance.

If you want to experience growth and enthusiasm click here - this can result from trying something new.