Hoooooo-rah! Women for Women: how and why.

Hoooooo-rah! I just received my sponsorship packet in the mail today from Women for Women International.

For those of you who don't know, Women for Women is an award-winning nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lot of women in war-torn countries. What makes Women for Women so incredible is that it builds one-to-one connections between sponsors [people like you and me] and women survivors of war in currently 8 different countries. Often times, these women, are socially excluded [due to their status as widows, or victims of war] and often, they are their family's sole breadwinner and caregiver.

Realizing that financial assistance alone is not enough, Women for Women helps women survivors develop marketable skills, cultivate an understanding of their rights and potential as women, and create secure ways to earn an income for years to come. In so doing, women can gradually overcome the horrors of war and civil strife — family loss and widowhood, rape, murder, forced migration, poverty, starvation, trafficking and torture — and gain the strength and stature that can help them rebuild their lives, families, and communities.

You can sponsor a woman, which entails a $27/month donation. $5 of this donation keeps the organization running, and the rest provides your sister with staples for her family, and pays for job and rights-awareness training. Depending on where and how educated your sister is, you may be able to correspond with her. At the end of one year, each woman "graduates".

The upshot is — this organization helps women in warn torn countries find each other, recover, start self-sustaining businesses, and apply for micro-credit — regularly demonstrating world-wide,

That one woman can change anything.

But…

MANY WOMEN CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING.


Why did I choose to become involved? Because I believe…to whom much is given, much is required. We have so, so much here in America…and no distance physically or geographically between my life here and my sister's in Rwanda makes foreign to me her basic desire to live and care for her family. She is 6 years younger than me, with 5 children…but if it is true [and I believe] that we are all interconnected…the basic welfare and well-being of a woman and her children half a world away matters to me when I go to sleep every night with a roof over my head, and wake up to the security of food to eat. I don't have a lot by this society's standards, [I arise early each morning to pack up and bike 10 miles to work], but I have an overwhelming abundance by comparison to hers…and I believe no act of love or compassion is ever insignificant. I did the research on this organization and was so moved by the personal difference they are making in women's lives, and so I decided to take the risk to reach out to someone who has known a very different life than mine. It is through building bridges between hearts like this that I believe, in this day of apathy or outright violence, we can mend the fabric of the world creating a future of hope for all our children.

-jen


hope you're interested. here's some nifty links:

Women for Women

Charity Navigator Guide to Intelligent Giving