Training and Support for Women Refugees
Interview with Mandana Hendessi, Iraq Country Director at Women for Women International Mandana Hendessi will be speaking at a dinner hosted by Women Advancing Microfinance UK on Tuesday 2nd May 2017 in London. She will be talking about the work that Women for Women International (WfWi) and its partners are doing in and around refugee […]
Bridging the Gender Gap in the African Startup Ecosystem
The startup ecosystem in Africa is growing from strength to strength. Innovative entrepreneurs across the continent are leveraging technology to turn the challenges they see around them into opportunities. While a few years ago Africa was probably not on their radar, international tech investors are now beginning to pay attention and according to Disrupt Africa, […]
Why Women Workers and Managers Prefer Electronic Wage Payments in Bangladesh
Payday can be an ordeal for women garment workers in Bangladesh. Often, they must wait in long lines, carry wads of cash through crowded streets, or encounter a mother-in-law demanding money. Garment factories account for a huge slice of Bangladesh’s economy and employ more than three million women. Most are paid in cash. That’s bad […]
Enhancing Women’s Economic Empowerment in DRC
Historically there’s been limited evidence on what works to genuinely economically empower women in DRC’s agricultural sectors. But, thanks to ÉLAN RDC’s WEE Learning Series, that’s now starting to change. Women and working-aged adolescent girls in DRC are some of the most marginalised in the world. Disproportionately high rates of poverty, inadequate access to basic […]
HERproject at 10 – Celebrating HERsuccess, Inspiring HERfuture
Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day 2017—a good time to take stock of our collective progress toward gender equality. And such a moment of reflection is particularly relevant for HERproject this year, as we are hitting a big milestone: It’s our 10th birthday! On our anniversary, we’re taking a moment to think about what […]
Girls’ Economic Empowerment – Why Context Matters for Financial Education
Last year I wrote about why it makes sense for corporates to invest in girls’ education and introduced Credit Suisse’s Financial Education for Girls program that aims to improve the financial knowledge and life skills of approximately 100,000 girls. At the time, the program had been implemented for only 18 months. This year we are […]
#BeBoldForChange: To Empower Women, You Need to Work with Men, Too
On International Women’s Day, Alison Ward explains how Cotton Connect’s work with Primark to support women cotton farmers in India is sowing transformative change by engaging both sexes. #BeBoldForChange is the theme for International Women’s Day 2017. While progress has been made around the world, the latest estimates from the World Economic Forum reveal that […]
Educating Girls – From Marginalized to Empowered
Pearson Case Study on Youth Employability Pearson and international NGO Camfed have announced an expansion of their existing partnership aimed at educating and empowering girls from low-income communities in Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Their work is being extended in Tanzania to support 6,400 more children in 80 schools. It is being led by young educated women, […]
Sri Lanka’s Garment Workers ‘Stand Up’ for Rights
Shirone Kaushalya works in a factory producing leather jackets. But she rarely sees the finished product. The 30-year-old woman uses a hammer to pound on the ridges and bumps of raw leather until it is smooth enough for stitching. Then she hands the flattened material to the next station in production and grabs another piece […]
New Evidence Supporting the Business Case for Investing in Female Garment Workers
CARE’s programmes on dignified work have for a number of years included training sessions for women in factories. Recent research provides further evidence, backing up our own findings, that investing in training for women workers makes good business sense for factory owners. A key initiative that we have been involved in implementing has been the […]
Making DFID’s Economic Development Strategy Work for Women
CARE firmly believes that inclusive economic development is at the core of eliminating extreme poverty and injustice. So we welcome DFID’s focus on this agenda and their long-awaited strategy, published this week. What we are most concerned about now, though, is how it will deliver for the world’s poorest women. We should be cautious about […]
Top 10 Discussions of 2016
2016 saw our 100th online discussion, with over 1,300 comments posted over the course of the year! Online discussions have played a central role in our new Challenges as a way for members to share insights on the Challenge question. From next year, we will be upgrading our discussion forum to make it easier to […]
Empowering Today’s Women for the Women of Tomorrow
Interview with Johanna Ryan, Social Performance Director, VisionFund International Johanna Ryan will be speaking at a dinner hosted by Women Advancing Microfinance UK on Tuesday 31st January 2017 in London. She will talk to us about the work VisionFund International does and the impact it’s having on the lives of women. Tickets to the event […]
Public-Private Partnerships Critical to Fighting AIDS
Interview with Dr. Huma Abbasi, General Manager, Global Health and Medical, Chevron, and Mark Viso, President and CEO, Pact December 1, 2016 marked the 28th World AIDS Day – observed to commemorate those who have struggled with the disease and those who continue to fight against it. Despite huge advances toward ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic, […]
Lightening the Load of Women’s Unpaid Care Work
We’re excited to announce a three-year partnership with Unilever’s Surf brand that aims to recognise, reduce and redistribute the amount of time spent by women and girls on unpaid care work. In some parts of the world women and girls currently spend as many as six hours a day on unpaid care work – a […]
A Conversation with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Internationally recognized development economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala served as Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and twice as Nigeria’s Finance Minister — the first woman to hold either post. She has held several key positions at the World Bank, and in 2014, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Currently, […]
Addressing Social Norms to Stop Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in Factories and Farms
“The workload is tremendous here. They swear at us when we fail to complete the work. … They scold. They say, ‘Hey you! Daughter of a bitch, daughter of a pig! How come so much work has been piled up?’ …At such times I feel really bad. … I cannot stand this. I cry. I […]
Can Complex Development Be Explained on a Bar of Chocolate?
How can Mondelēz International – the world’s biggest chocolate company – show their consumers that their chocolate is produced in a sustainable way? I was recently in Ghana with a group of Mondelēz’s European staff, seeing for themselves how their company is working with cocoa farmers through its Cocoa Life sustainability programme. The purpose of […]
10.5 Million Opportunities – Leveraging Savings Groups with Business Training
Hand in Hand International Ten-and-a-half million. That’s the number of Savings Group members worldwide. For more than two decades, in 70 countries, the groups have been credited with banking the unbanked, improving women’s economic empowerment and strengthening social cohesion. Now, according new research, another triumph can be added to the list: boosting business incomes by […]
Collaboration in Support of Micro-Enterprises in Value Chains
The “Growing Together” report – guidance to businesses to support them in helping micro-enterprises in their value chains to thrive, and why that is important for women’s economic empowerment. Our new report – “Growing Together”, developed with SABMiller, the Harvard Kennedy Corporate Responsibility Initiative and Business Fights Poverty, sets out why businesses should take a […]