By Kathy Groob, Publisher ElectWomen Magazine – While working to promote women candidates at EMILY’s List and Emerge America, Anne Moses believed there was a missing link to advancing the numbers for women in politics.  “Someone needed to be reaching young women in high school and in college to build political ambition,” says Anne Moses, the founder and President of the three-year-old program titled Ignite.

Ignite offers a community based program in California and Texas, to inspire young women to become civic and political leaders.  Ignite provides a political leadership training program for your women, and then connects them to opportunities where they can exercise these new skills.

Ignite serves young women (14-22) in their own communities, with an emphasis on lower income women. These are girls who may or may not have the confidence to run for office, but have a harder time seeking out and self-nominating for the kinds of leadership opportunities and training they need to get there.

The Ignite High School Program meets twice a week after school for 90 minutes, throughout the school year.  Ignite works with teachers at each school to recruit 12-15 female students, grades 9-12, to participate in the program. The curriculum uses a social justice framework to train participants.

The Ignite College Program provides a-12 hour training that can be delivered at college campuses in a daylong or multi-day format, depending on the institutional capacity. Training programs reach 15-30 women per group. The curriculum includes building political ambition; political leadership training, developing women elected official role models and helping students develop individualized long-range plans to position themselves for candidacy.

Ignite will be sponsoring its Women Leaders Conference on Saturday March 10^, 2012 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. in Berkeley California.  The day will include workshops and panels will feature California Congresswoman Barbara Lee as the keynote speaker.  For information, click here.

The Ignite long-range vision is to serve 25,000 young women each year within 10 years.  For information about Ignite, visit http://www.igniteca.org.