No society can prosper when half the population is prevented from reaching their full potential. Through our programs, we help communities shift their rules that specify what women can and should do to clear the social barriers that limit the success of women, their families and the community itself.
Through our investment in hundreds of women in each community where we operate, support to grassroots change agents and global advocacy, and engagement of men as allies and partners, we work to cultivate an environment where social norms shift towards valuing women's new social and economic roles. We train male community leaders to become trainers who promote women's rights and protections to other men. Through advocacy on the local and global levels, we work to change the systems, structures and institutions that hold women back.
Changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors isn’t enough. We need to change the social norms – the sometimes unspoken beliefs about women's and men’s roles – that hold society back from reaching true equality and progress for the future of their community.
Conflicts are fought not only on battlefields but within communities and on women’s bodies. Violence, instability, and poverty take their toll. That is why we focus on the physical and psychosocial wellbeing of the women in our program.
