A powerful, united and strategic women’s voice for powerless women and children is
critical to transforming our nation’s and world’s priorities. Building that voice across
faith, race, income, discipline and place is the purpose of the Southern Rural Black
Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice (SRBWI). The Children’s Defense
Fund’s (CDF) Southern Regional Office serves as regional administrator for SRBWI. The
fates of women and children are inextricably intertwined. CDF seeks a world where
mothers and babies are more important than missiles and bombs, where peace trumps
war, a world that invests in the healthy development of its children and families at
home. These values will carry over to just investment priorities for mothers and children
everywhere in our interdependent world.

ALBANY, Ga. — Today, the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI) released startling new findings, revealing that on nearly every social indicator of well-being — from income and earnings to obesity and food security — Black women, girls and children in the rural South rank low or last. SRBWI, works in 77 rural counties of the South’s “Black Belt,” some of the most neglected regions in the U.S.

Governors across the South are being pressured to prematurely reopen our states. They need to hear from us that we can hold the complexities of the economy and the life and death health decisions that we have to make in regards to physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This groundbreaking report, “We Need Access,” is based on interviews by SRBWI, Human Rights Watch, and nine community-based researchers with Black women living in three rural counties (Baker, Coffee, and Wilcox) in Georgia. The research has found that Georgia state and US federal policies neglect the reproductive healthcare needs of Black women and contribute to an environment in which they are dying of cervical cancer, a highly preventable disease, at disproportionate rates.