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Current
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Global Grassroots in
Rwanda.
Global Grassroots offers its
Social Entrepreneurship Training and
Social Venture Investment Program to
Rwanda to genocide survivors, notably widows, women with
HIV/AIDS and victims of sexual assault.
Global Grassroots is filling a
unique niche by helping survivors help themselves. Through investment in
capacity building, skills training and assistance with the launch of new
social ventures, Global Grassroots is investing in a culture of social
entrepreneurship that has the potential for changing systematically the
way in which communities creatively and sustainably solve the social
issues they face.
Please see our story on our
participation in Memorial Services for the
12th Anniversary of the Genocide in April
2006.
Read more about our recent projects
View our
photographs
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Women in Rwanda.
In 1994, over 800,000 Rwandan citizens were killed within a three-month
period in one of the most concentrated acts of genocide in human history.
Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan women and girls endured severe acts of
sexual and gender-based violence. At the end of the genocide, the
government estimated women made up nearly 70 percent of the population,
left to assume the traditional roles of men in heading households and
rebuilding lives. Today,
the population is still recovering. As of 2003, 52 percent of the
population was living on less than $1.00 per day. Twelve years later
and after the return of nearly one million refugees, 36 percent of
households are still headed by women, 60 percent of whom have no income or
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Global Grassroots in Darfur, Sudan.
Global Grassroots launched its work in 2005 with refugees who had fled to
Chad from Darfur, Sudan, where genocide has displaced approximately 2.5
million and caused the deaths of over 300,000 non-Arabs since early 2003.
Global Grassroots has identified a selection of social ideas generated by
refugees for future development, including a peace library, a school
cafeteria, a women's market cooperative and a children's multi-media
center. Our program in Chad has been placed temporarily on hold due
to the deteriorating security situation and will not resume until we can
ensure we can operate safely and sustainably in the region.
Please see our story about our month-long
site visit to the
refugee camps of eastern Chad,
published by Her Circle Ezine, Fall 2006.
View our
photographs |
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Women in Darfur, Sudan.
Women and children unarguably bear
the greatest burden of the Darfur conflict. Not only have many women lost
their husbands, but rape is also used widely as a violent tool of war.
During an attack on a village, girls as young as seven years old have been
gang raped by Arab militia men. Even after they relocate to IDP camps,
women are forced to leave the camps daily to seek firewood with a high
risk of rape, imprisonment or abduction in local and cross-border
attacks. Often women are sexually assaulted even within the supposed
safety of the IDP camps. Frequently rape victims are ostracized, disowned
and abandoned by their families, and others face unwanted pregnancies and
an even greater burden of care. When women finally are able to return home
and rebuild their lives, many will likely be left to support themselves
and their unwanted children alone.
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Global Grassroots in South Africa.
Prior to Global Grassroots' official
launch in 2004, we investigated the impact of HIV/AIDS on the women and
children of South Africa and the work of social entrepreneurs addressing
the crisis.
Please see our story on the
Topsy Sanctuary, founded by a pair of courageous social
entrepreneurs working to provide a life for the AIDS orphans of South
Africa.
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Women in South
Africa.
Women and
girls in South Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, due to their
poor access to education and training, lower social status and lack of
employment, are left with weakened independence and power for negotiating
use of a condom or fidelity with men and with little economic ability to
leave a dangerous relationship. According to the Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS:
- Of all those living with HIV
in the world, more than 60% or 25.8 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- In Sub-Saharan Africa,
nearly 60% of people living with HIV are women.
- As of 2002, approx. 11
million children had been orphaned due to AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa,
representing 80 percent of the world’s AIDS orphans.
- By the end of 2003 there
were 5.3 million South Africans infected with HIV, the largest single
population in the world.
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