AT WOMENSTRONG INTERNATIONAL
we find, fund, strengthen, and share women-driven solutions that will transform lives in urban areas.
We listen to
WOMEN
who know what they need.
WomenStrong was founded to elevate the voices of women in local communities, who know what they need, in order to thrive. How can communities and their external partners make progress? At WomenStrong, we start by listening to women.
We respond to
their Needs
Women know the challenges they face. They know what they need, to build better lives. WomenStrong partners listen to women and girls so they can address their most urgent priorities: for education, health, violence prevention, and economic security and opportunity.
Educating & empowering girls
AN ESTIMATED
130M
adolescent girls worldwide were out of school even before the covid pandemic
Education is a basic building block for every girl’s future success.
The millions of out-of-school girls are at greater risk of sexual violence, child marriage, and early pregnancy, threatening their lifetime outcomes. WomenStrong partners from SAHAR Education in Afghanistan (pictured) to Women’s Justice Initiative in Guatemala empower girls, helping them gain essential advocacy and life skills through girls’ clubs and other empowerment programs. These and other partners also work with fathers and other family members, to value girls’ education, and with teachers and schools, to disrupt harmful gender norms that imperil the future of both girls and boys.
IMPROVING WOMEN’S HEALTH
more than
800
women worldwide die each day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Women worldwide are disproportionately impacted by poor health, especially poor reproductive health.
Every two minutes, a woman dies of pregnancy or childbirth-related complications. An estimated 68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions, and millions more are injured. A crippling impediment to meeting the health needs of urban women and girls is the lack of access to accurate reproductive health information and quality affordable care. Many WomenStrong partners, including Roots of Health in the Philippines (pictured on previous slide), break down these barriers, getting information, services, and supplies into the hands of women and girls, along with youth-friendly, reproductive health education to empower adolescents to engage in healthy behaviors.
Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls
GLOBALLY
1 in 3
EXPERIENCE PHYSICAL ABUSE AND/OR SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN THEIR LIFETIMES
The World Health Organization calls violence against women a global health problem of pandemic proportions.
Globally, 1 in 3 women will experience physical abuse and/or sexual violence in their lifetimes, mostly by an intimate partner. And this was before the COVID pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns, which led to skyrocketing rates of domestic violence. WomenStrong partners, including The Action Foundation in Kenya (pictured), address violence through community awareness-raising activities, programs engaging males in addressing hypermasculinity and machismo, and direct services for girls, women, and survivors.
Strengthening Economic Security and Opportunity
Women’s work caring for others, if paid, would account for up to
40% of GDP
When women can earn an income and have decision-making power over their finances, they and their children do better, their families and communities are healthier, and nations thrive.
From the beginning, WomenStrong’s founding partners focused on economic empowerment for women, including through group savings and loans, small enterprises, job skills training, and financial literacy programs. Today, many of our Learning Lab partners provide education and income-generation activities in their life skills programs for adolescent girls. WomenStrong plans to launch our targeted Economic Security and Opportunity program in 2022.
We enable learning & sharing.
Grants are just the beginning. At WomenStrong, we bring women-led organizations together in a peer learning network where they can share their experiences, learn from one another what’s working and what’s not, build solidarity, and improve their programs.
Adapting to emerging realities.
Facing the global pandemic, WomenStrong partners proved their resilience – and so did we. COVID-19 drove us to innovate. Our partners found new ways of reaching their women and girls. And we found new ways to support and strengthen their work.
What have we learned?
By identifying experienced partners with a shared purpose and providing them with flexible funding and tailored capacity-strengthening, you can build a learning community that advances solutions to the challenges facing urban women and girls worldwide.
Looking to the
Future
There is strength, and wisdom, in numbers. WomenStrong’s Learning Lab now embraces 19 organizations in 16 nations. As we continue to grow, share, and learn, we strengthen our global community, deepening our impact on the lives of women and girls.
