In 2001, Women of the Year set up a charitable foundation with the aim of helping the women of the future in a tangible way. It offers small grants and practical support to individuals and organisations in a variety of ways.

The Foundation is funded by donations, profits from the lunch and other fund-raising activities. In 2008, for example, former Women of the Year president Joan Armatrading and chairman Gill Carrick challenged each other to run the New York marathon to raise funds for the Foundation. Both survived the gruelling 26.24 mile-long course through New York’s five boroughs and together raised a magnificent £60,000.

The Foundation supports individuals and organisations in the UK and internationally in a variety of ways. Through the grants it gives out, it has been able to help an incredibly diverse group of women to overcome the hurdles in their lives.

The projects we have supported have ranged from an award-winning women’s business and microcredit project, based in some of London’s most deprived inner city boroughs, to the Barefoot College which trained women solar engineers in Mali. We gave a start-up grant to sisters Millie and Katie Smith to help them develop their embryonic fashion accessory business, Angel Jackson; four years on, their belts and bags are regularly featured in magazines like Vogue and Elle and they sell through upmarket stores like Harrods and Fenwicks. Back in 2003, we helped Bethan Hughes undertake a postgraduate harp therapy course in the US. Today, she travels all over the UK bringing the healing power of harp music to hospitals, secure units and hospices, and she has won numerous awards.

In 2009 we chose four charities, which are dedicated to improving the lives of women and children:

Best Beginnings When Alison Baum’s sons were born, they both had cleft palates which left them unable to breastfeed. It also meant that they faced major surgery as tiny babies. Worse was to follow: at just eight days old, her second son was rushed into intensive care with viral meningitis where he spent the next few weeks desperately ill and in an incubator. Fortunately, he survived but what Alison witnessed and experienced led her to make a life-changing decision. In 2006, she gave up her job as a BBC producer and director and set up Best Beginnings, a small charity campaigning to improve babies’ health across the UK. Every year in the UK more than 80,000 babies are born prematurely or sick, a harrowing experience for both the babies and their parents. The Foundation is funding research into the issues which arise in these situations, to enable parents to be more in control and involved in the care of their babies.
Safe Hands for Mothers Question: how do you show an educational film in a far flung village in Ethiopia where there is no electricity? Answer: you design a solar powered DVD player that is robust enough to travel in a backpack or in a side saddle on a camel. The Foundation’s grant paid for four solar-powered DVD players which will be used to show The Big Push, Making Pregnancy Safer to the 1,470 women and girls of childbearing age living in four remote Ethiopian villages around 150 miles from Addis Ababa. It also helped to train eight new health workers.
The Philippine Community Fund Women living in the squalor of Manila’s huge rubbish dump will also stand a better chance in childbirth, thanks to the Foundation’s third grant to the Philippine Community Fund. It will go to build a clinic where the women can give birth safely and receive pre and post natal care, which will not only help the women but improve the survival rates of their babies. The fund was set up by Jane Walker in 2002 following a holiday during which she discovered ‘some of the worst poverty in the world’.
The National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA) NACoA’s research indicates that there are nearly 1m children currently living in a home where one or both parents have a problem with alcohol. Most will try to hide their problems from the outside world. They are three times more likely to become dependent on alcohol or drugs themselves and three times as likely to consider suicide both as children and adults. The Foundation’s grant funded free telephone helplines for these children, so that they have someone to talk to about the problems they face.