Thanks to your generous support of Together Women Rise in 2021, our Board has approved two, $50,000 Impact Partnership Grants to AMPLIFY Girls and The Colectivo.

In the past, we awarded Impact Partnership Grants to UNICEF USA and the Peace Corps. Our new Impact Partnership Grants are taking us in a new direction, funding “collectives” — networks of organizations working together to increase their impact on a shared goal. “By funding this collective approach, we can have a deeper impact and more sustainable outcomes for women and girls,” said Betsy Smulyan, Interim President and CEO. “We are particularly excited to invest in AMPLIFY and The Colectivo because these networks include several of Rise’s past grantees.”

AMPLIFY Girls is a collective made up of 25 partners across four countries in East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda), serving over 60,000 adolescent girls and their communities. It supports community-driven, grassroots organizations to drive change and improve outcomes for adolescent girls. For example, AMPLIFY’s member organizations identified a common problem in the fall of 2020: girls were not returning to school due to the economic challenges related to COVID. In response to this, AMPLYIFY launched a collective, return-to-school campaign. “Like Together Women Rise, we believe that we are stronger together,” AMPLIFY states.

AMPLIFY’s partners include the following past Rise grantees:

• Komera (2021 Featured Grantee in Rwanda)
• WISER International (2018 Featured Grantee in Kenya)
• Nurturing Minds (2011 Featured Grantee in Tanzania).

Click here to see a full list of AMPLIFY Girls’ partners.

The Colectivo is a network of organizations bound by a shared focus on the empowerment and dignity of girls and women in Guatemala. Training local female Guatemalan leaders is one example of their work. Three of the four partner organizations are Rise past grantees:

• MAIA (2012 Featured Grantee and 2016-2018 Sustained Grantee)
• WINGS (2020 Featured Grantee)
• Women’s Justice Initiative (2018 Featured Grantee)

The fourth partner is Maya Health Alliance.

Here is more information on these two collectives and how Together Women Rise’s funds will be used. In addition, speakers from both AMPLIFY and The Colectivo will participate in future monthly webinars. Please watch the Upcoming Events page of our website for dates, speakers, and registration info.

AMPLIFY Girls

Africa has the youngest population, with more than 50% under the age of 18. It is more urgent than ever to build the infrastructure to empower girls across the continent. Girls from poor and rural communities face economic oppression and patriarchal norms that keep them from accessing the education, healthcare, and tools they need to be independent and productive adults. As a result, many girls are forced to leave school early, they get pregnant or married at a young age, and inevitably the cycle of poverty continues.

AMPLIFY Girls believes that local, grassroots organizations (like the ones funded by Together Women Rise) are uniquely positioned to improve outcomes for adolescent girls based on the solutions that are best for their communities. Yet, these grassroots organizations are typically under-resourced and under-valued. According to a report issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 2018, community-based interventions received less than 1 per cent of the $150 billion in official development assistance.

AMPLIFY Girls’ offers support to community-driven, grassroots organizations, providing resources that are beyond the capacity of these small initiatives:

• Supporting the sharing of promising programmatic and organizational practices across their partner organizations, which promotes an environment of collaboration and support. This includes peer and expert led workshops to support the growth of their partners.
• Demonstrating and measuring the interventions they see as best for their communities. This year, they will share promising practices in girls’ agency across their partner organizations.
• Advocating with a collective voice for girls’ rights and the work of grassroots organizations serving adolescent girls across East Africa. This year, they will launch an adolescent girls’ advisory council, amplifying the voices of girls both locally and globally.

Our Impact Partnership Grant will help AMPLIFY Girls provide direct programmatic support to its’ partner organizations. Their goal is to continue to develop the individual capacities of its’ partners in fundraising, programs, research, and advocacy which will directly impact the lives of adolescent girls across the region.

The Colectivo

Guatemala has the worst gender equity gap in the Americas. While Maya women make up about 25 percent of the population, they represent just 1% of the nation’s congressional seats. This prevents indigenous women from accessing resources and power structures for real advancement in the country.

Our Impact Partnership Grant will help to fund a new leadership pathway for underrepresented women in Guatemala. The Colectivo created a two-year program to develop women leaders – both within and beyond the partner organizations — that will go on to transform Guatemala. “Working together collaboratively between the four partner organizations, we are modeling the necessity of helping other women rise, instead of competing,” The Colectivo states.

Program participants gain technical skills in the areas of Project Design, External Communications, and Managing Partnerships. They also confront the social norms, discrimination, and barriers that make it hard for women, especially indigenous women, to occupy positions of power in Guatemala. Through The Colectivo’s program, women develop the skills to navigate the cultural landscape of gender-based discrimination and inequality in an assertive and effective way.

The ultimate goal is a new generation of executive-level women leaders who will become the faces of four powerful and partnered organizations and will become the voices of systems-level change in their communities and professional spheres.