International Women's Day

In honor of International Women's Day (which was on Friday, March 8th), I attended an interesting lunch session with speakers from three great non-profits.  Each takes a different, yet innovative, way of creating global change for good by investing in women and girls.  A few of their initiatives:


The Hunger Project
Mission: To end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world.



Programs: While THP runs a variety of effective programs, we primarily learned on Friday about their efforts to create educate and activate women in elected positions in India. A 1993 amendment to India's constitution reserved 1/3 of all elected local council seats for women, but traditionally women in rural areas were subjugated both to less education, and less food/nutrition, than their male family members (check out a great one-minute video on the cycle of malnutrition here). This meant that women were filling the council seats, but were essentially only speakers for how their male family members instructed them to vote.  THP developed a 5 year training program to educate local women in areas such as developing leadership skills, breaking through bureaucracy via Federation-building, creating policy change, and increasing female voter participation. To date, the program has empowered more than 80,000 elected women officials.

Village Health Works
Mission: To provide quality, compassionate health care in a dignified environment while treating the social determinants of illness, disease, violence and neglect in collaboration with those we serve

Programs: VHW is an off-shoot of the well-regarded Partners in Health, a non-profit co-founded by Paul Farmer which revolutionized the concept of rural health care. The model pivots around the use of local community health workers, who live in remote areas and help their communities find effective health care through PIH's doctors and health centers, where other healthcare services would be a 2-3day walk away (You can read more about PiH here).


VHW is focused on rural villages in Burundi, providing programs around clinic services, nutrition/food security development, and economic development. Women are a key focus, as experience has shown that healthier, better-educated women foster healthier lifestyles among their children, families, and communities.

The story of one of VHW's founders, Deo Niyizonkiza, is told movingly by Tracy Kidder in the NYTimes best-seller Strength in What Remains.

Room to Read:
Mission:  We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education, reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world.
     To achieve this goal, we focus on two areas where we believe we can have the greatest impact: literacy and gender equality in education.  We work in collaboration with communities and local governments across Asia and Africa to develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and support girls to complete secondary school with the life skills they’ll need to succeed in school and beyond.

Programs: Room to Read focuses on several initiatives: creating school libraries, developing girl's education, publishing local-language children's books, and more. They currently have programs in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Zambia, South Africa and Tanzania.

Feeling inspired yet? If you're still wanting to learn more about the struggle of girls in developing countries, check out Girl Rising, a new groundbreaking film, directed by Academy Award nominee Richard Robbins, which tells the stories of 9 extraordinary girls from 9 countries, written by 9 celebrated writers and narrated by 9 renowned actresses. Girl Rising showcases the strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world - it is currently playing in select theaters nationally. (See the link for the official trailer).