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A select group of Georgia women battling poverty are getting financial help with no strings attached. Nonprofits GiveDirectly and the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund have collaborated for the “In Her Hands” initiative. Under this program, 650 women with children will receive $850 for two years, totaling $20,400. “In Her Hands” is a $13 million initiative that will address the financial insecurity that significantly affects women in the south.
“This is the largest guaranteed income project in the South to date, and one of the only projects nationwide that spans urban, suburban, and rural communities,” reads GiveDirectly’s website.
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute noted that Black women are twice as likely than white women to be living in poverty. There is also a significant pay gap that affects Black women. According to the U.S Census, Black women were paid 63 percent of what non-Hispanic white men were paid in 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Black women had the highest unemployment rate at 10.9 percent according to the Department of Labor. For white women it was 7.6 percent and it was 8.3 percent for all women.
In order to see the program’s results, GiveDirectly has partnered with Appalachian State University to collect data about this initiative. Miriam Laker-Oketta, research director at GiveDirectly, said they also plan to interview the participants about their overall experience.
“We want to hear the effects on their health, on their income, on their assets, family relationships, well-being and resilience,” Laker-Oketta told Reuters.
Enrollment officer Shonda Godfrey told Reuters that the program’s participants can’t hide their excitement about being enrolled.
“They leave happy – either crying or smiling or jumping,” she said. “You can have the relaxation of ‘I can feed my kids this month’.”
Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, said that income schemes like “In Her Hands” have been implemented before and have been quite successful.
“The data speaks for itself – people worked more,” he said. “People were less sick, less anxious – people spent more time with their families.”
