About Us

Educating and empowering women who are homeless with the skills and confidence necessary to get a job, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and regain a home for themselves and their children: this is the mission of Women’s Empowerment.

This was a mission created by homeless women expressing their needs; and a mission created by a community coming together around the desire to end homelessness—for good.

Our executive director and founder, Lisa Culp, was working at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes when the idea formed. Lisa watched homeless mothers raising their children on the streets. She watched those children grow up, still homeless, to become mothers of new babies born into homelessness. She knew there must be a solution to this cycle of poverty.

Working with focus groups at Loaves & Fishes, Lisa listened to women share their stories and their needs. In 2001, she worked with community leaders to create Women’s Empowerment, which proved to be an immediately successful solution in ending the cycle of poverty.

In 2004, Women’s Empowerment became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Since then, the team has grown to include a board and staff with deep knowledge of the homeless community’s needs, and dozens of volunteer teachers and mentors—all of whom donate countless hours of their time to ensuring that homeless women successfully rise out of poverty.

Since our inception, Women’s Empowerment has served 798 women and their 900 children (all of whom we know by name).

In May 2009, we were named Nonprofit of the Year by the Nonprofit Resource Center. This is one of the highest honors a nonprofit can receive in the Sacramento region.