The Labor Innovation Fund for the Twenty-First Century, aka LIFT, a collaborative project of the AFL-CIO with the Ford Foundation, the Solidago Foundation and the New World Foundation, was recently highlighted by the Berger-Marks Foundation. LIFT gives grants to partnership projects, “conversations around common agendas," and other efforts to link the union movement with community organizing focused on workers’ rights, decent jobs and a fair economy.

January is National Mentoring Month 2013, and the Institute for Women's Policy Research and the Berger-Marks Foundation continue to encourage unions to expand their mentoring efforts and institutionalize mentoring as part of their training efforts. The two organizations produced The Next Generation: A Handbook for Mentoring Future Union Leaders and are producing a series of workshops to help introduce mentoring concepts and help unions put together mentoring programs.

The Next Generation: A Handbook for Mentoring Future Union Leaders, just released by the Berger-Marks Foundation and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), provides hands-on advice and concrete tools for unions and other organizations to develop and implement mentoring programs for members and staff.

Even in the labor movement, the path for women is not always smooth or obvious. With its call for applications for grants, the Berger-Marks Foundation aims to open new doors to women and is looking to help a few good organizations fund their efforts to develop and serve women in the labor movement.

Ana Maria Archila, co-director of Make the Road New York (MRNY), is the winner of the first-ever Berger-Marks Foundation’s Edna Award for social justice. The $10,000 award recognizes young women whose leadership in the social justice movement has already fueled social change.

The clock’s ticking but you still have time to nominate a young woman leader for the Edna Award presented by the Berger-Marks Foundation. The foundation says the $10,000 award recognizes a young woman whose leadership in the social justice movement who has made:

an extraordinary contribution early in her career, and whose achievements indicate that her work will continue to significantly improve the lives of working women and men.

Three Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) chapters have been awarded grants by the Berger-Marks Foundation to help them mentor and promote young women activist and trade unionists.

The Berger-Marks Foundation will honor a young woman leader with its Edna Award. The $10,000 award recognizes a young woman whose leadership in the social justice movement has already fueled social change.