St. Francis Xavier University - Coady International Institute

Published purpose

This project seeks to enhance the empowerment and the active citizenship of women and girls in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, India and Tanzania. The project works to advance gender equality and poverty reduction by enhancing women’s capacity to participate in the social and economic life of their communities. The project applies an asset-based, citizen-led development approach to ensure that local communities, particularly women, exercise ownership and control over social and economic development initiatives that respond to their realities and priorities. The project is implemented by the Coady Institute in collaboration with five local partners. These partners are: Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India; Organization for Women in Self Employment (WISE) in Ethiopia; Gender Training Institute (GTI) of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP); Christian Commission for Development (CCDB) in Bangladesh; and Centre Haïtien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (CLE) in Haiti. Each partner implements a set of asset-based community initiatives in its respective country that engage current and prospective women leaders (and male champions) in advancing gender equality locally. Partners and their networks engage a cohort of nearly 1,500 women and their allies, including many from marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities, persons living with disabilities, and those facing extreme poverty. These leaders participate in in-country leadership courses and training-of-trainers facilitated locally by the partner organizations and Coady. They in turn will engage an estimated 25,000 local community members in skills-training, advocacy and awareness activities, and work with governance structures to reach women and men in advancing gender equitable, community-driven change. Community-level interventions include: livelihood improvements, climate change responses, local accountability initiatives engaging duty-bearers, and community awareness related to issues of gender-based violence, traditional practices, etc. The project also provides capacity building support for partner and intermediary organizations to strengthen their understanding and application of gender equitable, asset-based, citizen-led approaches. This includes a mix of in-country technical assistance, customized training workshops, curriculum development, Coady-based and online training, cross-partner exchanges and remote accompaniment. The project applies participatory and community-based research methods to document ongoing learning and to track the effectiveness of the different empowerment approaches developed. The findings from the project’s learning agenda is to be disseminated through practitioner-oriented channels that maximize both professional uptake and policy influence.