By Susan Wright, Co-Chair of the Together Women Rise Advocacy Group with RESULTS 

In the first 100 days of the new Administration, Together Women Rise advocates reached out to our Members of Congress to stress the importance of maintaining key foreign assistance programs that benefit women and children across the globe.

As of mid-May, volunteers from the Together Women Rise Advocacy Group, RESULTS, and other partners such as the National Peace Corps Association engaged in 173 meetings with Members of Congress, reaching 146 different Congressional offices: 

• 90 meetings with House Representatives or their staff 
• 56 meetings with Senators or their staff 

This has been a turbulent month in the U.S. Congress with hot debate around the President’s budget request for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts this October. This budget process is the critical time to urge Representatives and Senators to allocate US funding for crucial foreign assistance programs for Maternal and Child Health/Nutrition/Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Global Education programs, and the Global Fund as well as other programs to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. We are lobbying our representatives and senators and writing letters to the editor in numerous publications to ensure adequate funding for these programs. In our meetings we discuss priorities for advocacy in the coming period and offer ways to speak up. The RESULTS website, www.RESULTS.org, provides great tools and learning to help us take impactful actions.  

Join us in advocating on behalf of women, girls, and children everywhere! You can sign up here for the Together Women Rise Advocacy Chapter With RESULTS. We hold monthly webinars on the 3rd Tuesday of the month at 8:30 PM ET. Once you have signed up for the chapter, we will email you the meeting links directly, and we have coaches that will help you with taking any specific advocacy actions.  

At our June 17th meeting, our guest speaker will be Laurel Fain, a former USAID health officer who served in multiple countries and in DC. Laurel will talk about that work and about the health challenges these countries are now facing.