Women's Water Leadership Initiative
What if you could address domestic violence, sexual exploitation, gender equity, and malnutrition while simultaneously ensuring girls’ education, providing sustainable economic and community-led leadership opportunities for women, – all for $8 a person? Global Grassroots and its Rwandan women-led water teams have found a way.
In post-conflict East Africa, war may have ravaged the land, but not the potential of the brave and resilient women who are left to repair its wounds. We believe that women have the greatest insight into the needs affecting their communities, but the least access to training and resources needed to advance their own ideas. Global Grassroots has a unique solution.
At the heart of the Women’s Water Leadership Initiative is Global Grassroots’ core Academy for Conscious Change training program. Through the Academy for Conscious Social Change, women design, construct and operate their own water enterprises that serve as sustainable, social innovation hubs where women, and their communities, begin to solve complex social issues. Our four-phase, 18-24 month social venture incubator is a unique blend of mindfulness-based leadership skills, evidence-based trauma-healing practices, social entrepreneurship tools, and seed funding. Each water enterprise is completely financially sustainable after launch and becomes the financial engine that generates the ongoing resources for women to address other critical social needs in their community.
To date, we have trained over 17 women-led teams and funded 20 women-led WASH ventures by providing the critical resources women need to design, launch, and maintain their own water ventures which reach more than 72,000 Rwandan adults and children. Rather than simply build clean water infrastructure to hand over to a community when construction is complete, Global Grassroots invests in aspiring women leaders and their ventures, so they can lead from within. During COVID, our teams have been on the front lines of distributing soap, establishing hand-washing stations, and supplying free water to families with the greatest need.
Of the 20 ventures run by Global Grassroots’ women-led teams, all but one is still operational and many of our teams have expanded their ventures to include additional water access points.
What makes Global Grassroots programs so sustainable? We believe it is our grassroots wisdom-based approach to community transformation and our commitment to catalyzing women as the leaders of social and cultural change. At the heart of the Women’s Water Leadership Initiative is Global Grassroots’ core Academy for Conscious Change training program. Conscious Social Change is a mindfulness-based leadership program and social venture incubator for teams of women who wish to launch their own social change venture (a micro-NGO). We are currently only funding those ventures interested in addressing water and sanitation issues. The Academy has four phases and lasts an average of 18-24 months.
Learn more about our unique program model and our far-reaching impact in East Africa.
