The Alabama Women's Economic Summit
Mission Statement:

"To provide an opportunity to consider, debate and endorse the issues that are critical to women fulfilling their career potential and to reflect a new vision for the 21st century . "

Alabama Women’s Economic Summit Initiatives

Education

• Establish accountability in education.
  
• Require all students (male and female) be taught life skills such as parenting, nutrition, childcare, and family finances.
• Coordinate funding for and improve education and mentoring projects.
• Challenge women business owners to mentor local high school students and offer internships.
• Encourage organizations to provide more scholarships for young women.

Entrepreneurship and Business Initiatives

• Establish educational programs in high schools and colleges to encourage young women to consider entrepreneurial careers.
• Encourage alliances between financial institutions, venture capitalists, and women's business ownership groups to design more creative financing opportunities for women-owned businesses.
• Develop counseling programs to assist women business owners in business plan development, financing, promotion, marketing, utilizing technology, etc.
• Foster the development of a Woman's Speakers Bureau in the State to mentor potential business owners
• Create a more efficient system for obtaining business licenses and assessing sales taxes in the State that would eliminate the present burdensome process.

Government and Legislative Initiatives

• Institute public policies that encourage and facilitate women entering the work place and promote equal opportunity for career and salary advancement.
• Encourage more women to run for public office in Alabama. Alabama has a total of 141 Legislators. In 1997 six of these legislators were women; in 1998 and 1999 11 were women.
• Endorse qualified political candidates who are responsive to child support and domestic relations issues.
• Institute a lobbying group to focus on the dependent care (child and adult) needs of Alabama’s families.
• Strive for improved laws on tort reform, sales tax assessment, business liability and business insurance. Three bills of the seven-bill tort reform package supported widely by business groups were signed into law in 1999.
• Update child support and alimony statutory guidelines to reflect current economic conditions.
• Seek additional government funding to support counseling programs in the state to assist women business owners in such areas as business plan development, financing and marketing.

Leadership Initiatives

• Support through financial contributions and volunteer assistance those private and public organizations that champion women’s concerns and economic development. Mentor others who can benefit from successful role models.
  
• Build credibility, knowledge, leadership, opportunity and skills for women in Alabama through individual, organizational and political networking.

Personal Initiatives

• Build credibility, knowledge and skills by being authentic.
• Attend to financial "self-defense."
• Identify mentors who sincerely care. Study these role models and learn from them.
• Become a self-advocate. Believe in and commit to independent achievement.

Social Initiatives

• Develop programs and activities that lead to early assessment of problems such as barriers to employment, a need for childcare, spousal/parental abuse, perennial welfare recipients or homelessness, etc.
• Advance motivational and training programs that encourage individuals to move off welfare into the working world.
• Identify creative approaches to flexible work arrangements to help men and women attain balance
  in their work and family roles.
• Promote more corporate, organizational and governmental involvement in effective resolution of work family and domestic relations issues.
• Child-care, eldercare, flexible hours, welfare to work, etc. are not gender issues. They are business issues that affect profitability.

Technology Initiatives

• Provide affordable hardware, software and Internet access to K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and individual users.
• Create a standardized search engine for Internet users that facilitates easy access to needed information by the novice user.
• Assess and develop cost effective educational programs for individuals (especially women) and small businesses in information technology.
• Establish a common security mechanism (requiring minimal user knowledge) to promote extensive use of technology such as E-mail and online shopping and financial transactions.
• Offer affordable Internet access to rural areas (possibly through links or computer access at local community colleges or libraries).
• Harness technology as a tool and use it effectively.

We welcome your comments on these initiatives and your suggestions for implementation. Contact the Alabama Women’s Economic Summit by phone at (205) 967-0085, by fax at (205) 967-1624, or
www.womens-exchange.com.