A Project of AAUW of Puerto Rico (the state board)
Click here to access the the Online Seminar
WorkSmart Project Plan
WorkSmart is an initiative of AAUW (American Association of University Women) focusing on the skill of salary negotiation for the purpose of promoting pay equity. The goal for AAUW for this project is to have 10 million women trained in salary negotiation by 2023.
The AAUW of Puerto Rico is mobilized to participate in the overall effort, focusing on Puerto Rico exclusively. AAUW PR estimates that there are about 1.1 million women in Puerto Rico of working age who can benefit from salary negotiation training. The goal of this project is to get many of those women to take the training. Our goal could reasonably be to get 40,000 women in PR to take the course during the next five years. As a start, the AAUW of PR has a project plan for the period from December 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020.
Join us in our efforts to close the gender wage gap and to improve the economic security of women in Puerto Rico.
The Start-Up Phase (December through June)
- The plan begins with the cultivation of local AAUW members, via an online survey. Our goal is to have 100% of the local AAUW members knowledgeable about the project, and participating personally, spreading the word themselves via an email template, or providing contacts to AAUW PR for our email campaigns. From this beginning, we will work through the contacts, then the contacts’ contacts, etc.
We are using MailChimp and Survey Monkey for these efforts. The plan involves alternating the survey with email notices. Emails and contacts we collect through the process will be used exclusively for our WorkSmart effort, unless we are given explicit permission to add them to our local AAUW email list.
- The second factor of our electronic part of the plan will focus on social media advertising, primarily Facebook.
Facebook has 810,000 women between the ages of 18 and 60 in Puerto Rico using their platform. Our plan involves boosting two posts per month. AAUW PR has a Facebook page (Puerto Rico AAUW) for this effort.
- The third part of our plan involves the dissemination of bookmarks throughout the island. AAUW will rely on our own members to supply the contacts and to make trips to distribute the bookmarks to locations where they can be distributed. These would be universities, libraries, office parks and major employers, etc.
The bookmarks are a physical reminder of the website for the free online seminar. Naturally, the bookmarks will be most effective when passed on by someone who has taken the course. The email program outlined in #1 is how we will identify these people and ask them to continue to pass the message along, either distributing bookmarks or through email.
- The fourth part of our Start Up Plan involves a pilot workshop. This workshop will convene a group for two-hours (or maximum a half day) to facilitate participants’ taking the seminar online. We will use locations with good internet service for a group and ample parking. We also intend to identify a facilitator or two (fluent in Spanish & English). We may serve light refreshments. We will provide the participants with a course workbook. This event would be free or very low cost to participants. The first pilot will take place in January or February.
If successful (well-attended and rated highly by participants) we will repeat the workshops as much as we are able.
Conclusion
This project can provide enormous visibility for our organization and make an impact on the well-being of women and their families. Financial security is one of AAUW’s important issues because it is the goal of pay equity. Better income for women means more resources for their children and lower family stress (which could lead to domestic violence).
If you would like to know more about this project or volunteer to work with us, please email PuertoRicoStatePresident@gmail.com.