Small donations make powerful voice

Editor's note: Since 1978, readers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have been donating generously to the newspaper's annual Readers Care Fund drive, raising more than $4.7 million for area charities. Today we provide a closer look at one of the five charities that will benefit this year: Powerful Voices' STAGES program.

It was only a $25 donation, but Holly Benton was in law school with student loans and it was all she could afford a few years back.

She thought giving the money to Powerful Voices, a non-profit agency that serves adolescent girls, would support issues close to her heart. A former teacher and sociologist who studied females' relationships to their bodies, Benton admired the group's work with young women.

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"It just felt like a way to connect as an individual, that was really powerful and meaningful and good," she said. "Where we choose to give our $25, it's really our statement about what we value."

Now, as a lawyer (albeit still one with student loans) with Williams, Kastner & Gibbs in Seattle, Benton gives donations in the hundreds instead of the tens to her favorite charities.

And as a volunteer board member for Powerful Voices, she now knows how much effect even her small donations had.

Forty-three percent of the budget for Powerful Voices, a recipient of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Readers Care Fund drive, comes from individual donations -- more than from any other source. And nearly three-quarters of those individual donations in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, were for amounts between $1 and $100, said Powerful Voices Executive Director Julie Edsforth.

"You say, what's 10 bucks?" Benton said.

"No! Ten bucks is so important to our organization."

Powerful Voices operates two main programs. STAGES (Strength Through All-Girl Education and Support), which the Readers Care Fund supports, trains and mentors adolescents in juvenile detention centers and after their release. The Girls RAP (Rights! Action! Power!) program teaches young women in school about leadership skills and self-respect.

A $75 donation, said Maureen Emerson Feit, development associate for Powerful Voices, pays for a girl to participate in peer education workshops after being released from juvenile detention; $750 pays travel costs for all the girls who need a way to get to and from the Powerful Voices programs. An entire month of juvenile detention workshops, serving 100 girls, costs $2,500.

Foundation giving and government grants have declined, said Feit, and agencies such as Powerful Voices are relying more on the generosity of people in the community.

Benton, 36, also supports Childhaven and the Northwest Women's Law Center.

To her, giving money is a way to participate in the community, providing a ripple effect in which the people helped by her donations will in turn make Seattle a better place.

"Some people can't give money. They give with time. I have no time," she said.

That's not quite true. Benton's Powerful Voices board meetings and other work with the agency takes effort and hours. But Benton said she considers it a privilege to be in the company of people who are making such a difference to young women.

Even as a child, Benton said, it was clear to her that boys and girls were treated differently and had different expectations placed on them. And it was hard as she grew older to see other girls start to put themselves second to boys, both socially and academically.

"I didn't understand it, because I didn't feel any different from anyone else," she said.

With the training and mentoring she sees Powerful Voices staff do, she said, "You have an opportunity to say (to a girl), 'You count.' "

This year, she's planning on giving donations as gifts in the name of her grandmother and other relatives, in addition to the donations she makes in her own name.

"My grandmother does not need another sweater. But I know she wouldn't be where she is if she hadn't had the kind of support and mentoring she did."

P-I reporter Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8190 or rebekahdenn@seattlepi.com

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