subscribe | advertise | about | contact | home

Women Helping Women in Need
by Nancy Schatz Alton

It all started with Mom – three mothers, to be exact. Three women raised three women who went on to lead nonprofit organizations in Washington state. These mothers don’t look the same on paper. One was an immigrant from Yugoslavia, another married at 16 and never earned more than minimum wage, the third was a single mom who reared two sets of identical twin girls. Despite their divergent backgrounds, these moms raised their daughters to believe that giving to those less fortunate was akin to following the golden rule.

Thanks to the values they instilled in their girls, thousands of women in Washington state receive support and services necessary for their survival. These daughters are visionary leaders who make a daily difference in women’s lives: Rita Ryder, president of the YWCA of Seattle, King County and Snohomish County; Cheryl Cobbs, executive director of the Fremont Public Association; and Julia Pritt, founder of Washington Women in Need.

Julia Pritt
The story behind Julia Pritt’s nonprofit agency, Washington Women in Need (WWIN), comes out in bits and pieces, slowly, without loud whistles and bells. A successful businesswoman who has raised three children, Pritt and her husband started Attachmate in 1982, a corporation that designs management software and services for major businesses and government agencies. A decade later, while she was in her late fifties, Pritt experienced several life-altering changes. First her mother died. Then her husband of 20-plus years left her, making her both a divorcée and a wealthy woman. In 1990, she found a lump in her breast. After a biopsy in 1991 confirmed it was cancerous, Pritt underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

“I was in the fourth month of chemotherapy for breast cancer and I thought, ‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” At first I was thinking of helping women with breast cancer,” says Pritt, a down-to-earth woman who likes to remain behind the scenes. “I asked God what I was going to do. Then I started getting these ideas.”

Pritt grew up poor. Lacking health insurance, her family never visited doctors or dentists. Her mother became an extreme example of the old wives’ tale that “you lose a tooth for every child you have.” She lost all of her teeth. Pritt envisioned starting up a nonprofit agency that would provide money for all the services her mother lacked: scholarships for education, mental health counseling, health care insurance premiums, and physical, dental, vision and hearing exams and treatment. She wanted to put the needs of women first, with no strings attached. WWIN would award grants to women so they could choose their own counselors, doctors and schools with the money awarded to them.

Knowing nothing about the nonprofit world, Pritt gathered some friends together, created a board, a staff of two people (herself included), and started taking classes on nonprofits at Bellevue Community College.

WWIN, which opened its doors in 1992, provides financial assistance for the health and education needs of low-income women. Bureaucracy is kept to a minimum, and grants are awarded to women based solely on need. If a woman is 18 or older and earns less than $18,000, she qualifies for assistance, and she can be awarded up to $10,000 worth of grants in her lifetime.

“There are an enormous number of women in need: There are 600,000 women in Washington state living in poverty. We don’t have any illusions that we can help every woman, but we can help 300-plus a year,” says Colleen Crowley, WWIN’s executive director.

The women WWIN helps are often divorced, unemployed or suffering from domestic abuse, life-threatening illnesses or physical and mental impairments. Although Pritt’s inspiration for the services came from thinking about her mother’s life, they also reflect Pritt’s history. When she divorced, she was able to obtain counseling to deal with her grief. When she became ill, her health insurance served all her medical needs. And, because she never finished college herself, she feels women’s success hinges on gaining an educational foundation, says Crowley.

Because women often put the needs of others before themselves – especially if they have children – Pritt wants her organization to focus solely on the needs of women. “We get calls from women who want help for their children, but what we’re here for is you,” says Crowley. “We want to eliminate the barrier that you can’t get counseling [or other help] because it takes money away from the kids. Then you become the stable person in the family.”

Pritt no longer works in the office, feeling her organization needs fresh ideas to keep growing. Her biggest contribution continues to be one she has provided since her small Bellevue office opened: She pays all of the nonprofit’s operating expenses, so 100 percent of donations go directly to helping women. The rewards she receives from being the face behind WWIN are simple. “I just walked up today and this lady wanted to shake my hand because we’re giving her counseling,” says Pritt. “Every year we have a video of clients and that’s very rewarding to me, to see the women we’ve helped. And, as you get older, you do want to make a difference.”

Rita Ryder
Rita Ryder’s workspace is anything but small and quiet. Located in Belltown, her office is on the second floor of the YWCA’s seven-story Opportunity Place, which includes 145 units of low-income housing, a job-training center and Angeline’s Center, a day center for homeless women. Since opening in December of 2003, this brick building adorned with silver-leafed balconies hums with activity. It’s a fitting backdrop for Ryder, who rarely slows down, quickly saying hello to staff members as she shows off Opportunity Place, which is the most telling success story of her lengthy career at the YWCA.

In 1978, Ryder became the executive director of the YWCA of Seattle (now the YWCA of Seattle, King County and Snohomish County). She’s now the president of strategic initiatives, a role created since the successful $43 million capital campaign that built five new facilities, including Opportunity Place. This vast nonprofit, with 38 facilities that serve 55,000 women and families each year, has a centered leader who takes a community approach to leadership.

The YWCA was one of the first institutions in the community. Founded in 1894 in a rough-and-tumble young town, Ryder says the women of the community were concerned with the welfare of the new women moving into Seattle. “There’s always been a strong focus on creating hope and opportunity for women. We’re very mission focused,” she says.

Ryder believes this mission-driven focus draws high-quality board leadership and a strong senior staff, making her job easier. But Ryder is also an anchor in the larger community, which brings countless resources to the YWCA, from money to volunteers. She sits on five boards; she’s a member of several community organizations; and she’s an assistant affiliate professor with the University of Washington Graduate School of Social Work. “It’s very important to get involved and support the business community and [to] invite the community to support us,” says Ryder, who accents her words with hand motions. “If you engage people, then they learn about these issues. They become involved, and then you’ve got a community that’s all working together on these things.”

Her neighbor-helping-neighbor philosophy stems from her childhood. Ryder grew up on Queen Anne, which was a blue-collar neighborhood in the 1950s. Her mother emigrated from Yugoslavia as a child, and Ryder grew up in a working class family that always shared what little they had. “Throughout my childhood, there was always a focus on people who didn’t have the same opportunities, whether it was in other countries or in this country,” she says. “My mother was always involved in going to hospitals and visiting people who weren’t doing as well in the neighborhood. In our church and school [St. Anne’s], we were always collecting money and things to send overseas. Growing up that way, it became part of my core value system.”

This value system plays out every day at Opportunity Place. Angeline’s Center for Homeless Women has a day center that serves 200 women; its dayroom turns into an emergency shelter every night. More women gather in the kitchen for an evening meal and to garner spots at other homeless shelters for the night. Opportunity Place has clean, bright studio and one-bedroom low-income apartments. Two hundred people use the Employment Center housed on its second floor. The 70-plus computers are busy all day. Four classrooms offer classes that range from GED prep, to ESL classes, to computer literacy training.

The YWCA volunteers speak to Ryder’s success. Sue Sherbrooke, the YWCA’s chief executive director, says Ryder has been a successful leader for so long because she is visionary. She points out that Ryder was the first woman to join the Downtown Rotary. “She’ll take the mission out to the community,” Sherbrooke says. “Unlike a lot of YWCAs that really struggled with what they were going to do mission-wise, she drove the mission from being oriented to adult educational and fitness things that were important in previous times. The world is changing and she’s been able to meet the needs of women and children during an economic downturn. She’s been exceptional at seeing [the need for change] and garnering the resources it takes to meet the needs [of women].”

Cheryl Cobbs
The Fremont Public Association (FPA) serves more than 25,000 individuals and families every year. The office of Cheryl Cobbs, its executive director, resides on tree-lined 45th Street, the soul of Wallingford. Since its inception in 1974, this organization has grown beyond its Fremont roots, with 25 programs in Seattle and King County. Cobbs, a jovial woman with an ever-ready laugh, has worked here for 20 years, stepping into the top position in 1996. By her own admission, she’s a “change junky.” After toiling for a city agency and running her own consulting business, she’s glad to be at a place where she can see change happen up close, without the bureaucracy-heavy feel of a government office.

Although Cobbs could easily let the 550 employees and national service members do all the hands-on work, she stays involved with the day-to-day operations. She takes shifts at Capital Hill’s Broadview Emergency Shelter for Women and Children; she sits in on FPA client-focus groups; and says one of her favorite daily activities is talking to the sweet Russian women who line up early for the services offered at her branch office.

Like the YWCA’s Opportunity Place, the FPA’s Community Resource Center in Wallingford is a hub of activity. On the second and third floor of a fairly new building (built in 1998), the community it serves walks through its doors every day. The first floor houses other community organizations, including a food bank and a public library. The FPA office houses several programs, from Operation Frontline, which offers cooking classes on how to meet nutritional needs with meals concocted from food banks, to Solid Ground, a case management program for homeless people that follows people through their first year in permanent housing.

Unlike most service agencies, nonprofit or government run, the FPA provides both direct services as well as advocacy work around policy and legislative issues. “You can’t address the root issues [of poverty] unless you address it on a policy level,” says Cobbs.
In a similar vein, the FPA has recently focused its attention on anti-racism work. “About half of the people we serve are people of color. There are huge barriers to people of color to things like jobs and schools for their children,” she says. “There’s a clear connection between institutional racism and poverty. If our mission is to eliminate poverty, we can’t do that if we don’t eliminate racism.”

Cobbs brings a wealth of personal experience to the FPA, which is one of the reasons she is able to look at the bigger picture when it comes to issues of poverty. Denise Klein, a former co-worker who has known Cobbs for more than 30 years, notes that she didn’t come in at the executive level. “She’s been at the grassroots level. She understands the needs of people who are actually performing the services,” says Klein. “And she is pretty much without ego in the best sense. She’s very modest and somewhat shy; I would guess that she’s worked hard to be at a place where she’s comfortable making public presentations.”

According to Cobbs, it’s her passion that drives her to work every day, saying that anybody can learn the mechanics of her job, but it’s her commitment to help people that keeps her from burning out. She believes her mother instilled within her a desire to effect change. “I was raised by a single mom. She had four kids: two sets of identical twins,” says Cobbs. “She worked two jobs most of the time we were growing up, [but] she still had some time to do volunteer work. She would drag us to places like the Red Cross when there was an earthquake in Alaska. We learned early on that there were people less fortunate than us. It was a basic expectation in our house that we did what we could to help.”

Like Pritt, it’s the thanks she receives from clients that makes the job worthwhile. She talks of meeting a woman who was a client of the Broadview Shelter at a recent annual luncheon. A victim of domestic violence who finally managed to leave her husband, she thanked Cobbs for FPA’s services. “She said the program gave her the time and space she needed to figure out how to make her life work,” says Cobbs. “When you hear someone tell you what your program did for them, that is really all you need.”

©2004 Caliope Publishing Company