The Long Island Fund for Girls Gender Equity Project was launched in 1999. The project's goals are to provide a vehicle for the sharing of gender equity resources among Long Island schools, to help avoid the duplication of effort in developing curriculum and teaching strategies, to share model programs, to increase awareness of gender based biases that may exist in local learning environments, and to give stakeholders the knowledge and tools to address them.

Special events planned for 2007-8 include: exploration of opportunities for young women in technological careers including Math, Sciences and Engineering fields, improving the connection between apprenticeship programs and opportunities in the trades with Long Island's young women, cultivating the next generation of leadership among young women and encouraging young women to consider public office, and what vision and steps does it take to bridge from Middle School through High School to a career choice not frequented by women.

The Fund's Gender Equity in Education collaboration includes the following four programs:

This audit is available to schools and school districts to perform institutional self-assessments of gender equity. The audit, designed by well-known gender researcher and Fund supporter Charol Shakeshaft, provides schools with the opportunity to pinpoint areas where additional work is needed to establish gender equitable learning environments.

Each year a special event series program is developed for girls. In early 2006 a special initiative entitled Smart Careers for Girls was presented to encourage middle and high school girls to consider careers in math, science, technology and engineering. A 2007-8 initiative underway will address what vision and steps does it take to bridge from Middle-High School to College or other career choices. Entitled Smart Careers for Girls II -- Hot Topics, Hot Careers, Bright Futures for Girls! will encourage recognition of non-traditional jobs/career choices for Long Island's future generation of working women.

This annual island-wide March conference, now having completed its 8th year, continues to grow and attract a diverse audience of educators, parents, community leaders and students. Its purpose is to provide a forum for the sharing of model gender equity strategies among conference participants, permitting attendees to take away with them a "blueprint" that will assist in replicating models in their own schools and communities. To keep the conference current, a different focus is adopted for each year. Previous themes were Planning for Action 2000 and Beyond and Students and Educators as Partners for Change. In 2002, the conference focused on a current "hot" topic in education, Building a Future for Girls that Includes 'Nontraditional' Paths (Math, Science, Engineering, Technology, and the Trades). In 2003 we focused on diversity acceptance and issues dealing with bullying and harassment with our conference entitled Building a World of Tolerance, Opportunity, and Respect. We are pleased to have developed a partnership with SCOPE that began in 2002, allowing teachers to earn in-service credit for attending the conference. Celebrating our 5th year, our conference entitled Claiming the 21st Century, Where we've been, Where we've arrived and Where we still need to go..., highlighted programs available that support advocacy & empowerment, leadership & civic responsibility, innovations in education and lessons learned from women's history in education & employment. Further focusing on leadership -- what it is, why it matters and how girls and young women can become leaders, out 6th conference provided an opportunity to share and prepare Today's Girls, Tomorrow's Leaders. Last year's 7th conference invited attendees to focus on girls' relationships with their peer and was entitled Mean Girls -- Fact, Fiction and Choosing Your Own Behavior. Entitled Confidence and Competence- Becoming Your Best Self our 8th conference, held March 21, 2007 at Stony Brook University, explored the steps it takes for girls to bridge from High School to College or other non-traditional career choices. We were once again delighted to host over 260 participants. To further support the development of our other GE 2008 components, we will plan to host our next conference in March 2009...stay tuned!

This National Science Foundation grant was awarded to a Stony Brook University researcher to study whether the interest of girls and young women in science, technology, engineering and math careers can be increased through increasing their exposure to specific information about women in these fields. The grant supported Think Again...Girls Can!, a university-based collaboration which included LIFWG. The project produced a website (www.girlscan.org) and DVDs which include interviews with women in science, technology, engineering and math. These media provide a means to disseminate information about scientists who love what they do, and who just happen to be women with rich professional and personal lives. The project website is accessible to all and the DVDs are available and have been distributed free of charge to schools and community organizations.

The Fund has planned to further develop, compile, store and make statistics about Long Island women and girls more readily available to the public. These statistics and information database will track the improvements and challenges yet facing women and girls on Long Island to support advocacy and encourage girls to broaden their horizons when choosing careers to further support the Gender Equity initiative's goals.