Join Our Advocacy Efforts to Sustain and Build Upon Our Grantees’ Success
By Susan Wright, Co-Chair of Together Women Rise Advocacy Group with RESULTSÂ Â
Together Women Rise provides much-needed support for community-based organizations working to improve agency and life skills and provides opportunities for girls and women to thrive in difficult conditions. However, these organizations also need functioning health and education systems to succeed.  For example, Together Women Rise’s December Featured Grantee, GAIA Vaccine Foundation, works with support from the international program Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, national health authorities, and local schools to ensure that the HPV vaccine is available when girls are ready to be vaccinated. This is why advocating for US support of international organizations such as Gavi or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, as well as for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to strengthen health and education systems in low-income countries, is essential to Rise’s actions. Particularly in the current context of potentially drastic cuts in many of these programs, it is important for our elected officials to know that their constituents strongly support these programs and want to see them continued. Â