From the U.S. business community to the NGO community, members of the USGLC network are working on the frontlines to lift up women and promote peace and equality.

ACDI/VOCA
ACDI/VOCA is supporting the resilience of both people and planet. Partnering with USAID, the Feed the Future Kenya Livestock Market System Activity (LMS) helps support groups like the Adadijole Women’s Group in Wajir County in Northern Kenya. LMS support for the Women’s Group helped them to invest in greenhouses that diversified their crops, improved disease management in crop rotation, and earned them enough financial stability to pay themselves and invest in the expansion of their operation.

Alight
At Alight, we’re dedicating the month of March to raise awareness for Somali women experiencing the worst drought and famine in history. In Kismayo, Somalia, we met a remarkable woman named Sacdiyo who teaches young women to tailor and tie dye because she understands the power of a useful trade. Alight and Sacdiyo have worked together to build a training center called Wadajir – which means ‘togetherness’ – and her story continues to inspire us of the change that is possible by listening to women and empowering them to co-create solutions for their lives.

Airbnb
Airbnb supports women worldwide by providing a platform for entrepreneurship. Last year women on Airbnb earned more than $16 billion on the platform– nearly 10 percent more than male Hosts. In addition, in 2022 women made up a majority of our Host community (55 percent), with even higher proportions in the US (58 percent), Australia (65 percent), Ireland (60 percent), New Zealand (70 percent) and South Africa (64 percent). We’re continually inspired by many of the women Hosts who have used Airbnb to change their lives through hospitality, earn money, and reach their goals. Women like Sunisa from Thailand who says hosting is about “sharing with a sincere spirit”.

Amazon
Amazon Mexico launched Lógralo Online, an accelerator program for women-led companies that provides ecommerce training for female entrepreneurs and seed investment for the finalists. Amazon Mexico also released new results from its year-round work to promote the professional growth of women within the company. By the end of January 2023, Amazon Mexico registered a 10% increase in the representation of women in its work teams compared to the previous year.

Cargill
Women are at the heart of many farming communities as they are the vital link connecting food to tables around the world. Cargill is working to advance gender equity in our operating and supply chain communities. From their seat at the center of the agricultural supply chain, Cargill is uniquely positioned to facilitate connections that help bring new possibilities for women and girls as we strive to make the world’s food system more sustainable, resilient, and accessible for all.

Chemonics International
By working with local organizations and judicial institutions in Colombia, the USAID Inclusive Justice Activity, implemented by Chemonics, supported the improvement of access to justice for survivors of gender-based violence. The dual strategy of strengthening both civil society and integrating a gender-sensitive approach to judicial institutions has been developed to build more inclusive access to justice for survivors of gender based-violence.

Chevron
The Chevron Global Women’s Network is celebrating and recognizing Dress for Success Worldwide for empowering women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire, and development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. Through their partnership with Dress for Success, Chevron has invested over $600,000 since 2016 and volunteered over 2000 hours with various Dress for Success chapters.

Citi
Citi supports women’s empowerment across all areas of the bank including working towards its social impact commitment to expand access to essential services to 10 million women out of 15 million households globally by 2025. Under this commitment Citi’s Social Finance team has reached more than 4.5 million women thus far with innovative mechanisms, such as Citi’s $1 billion social finance bond offering, to support access to financial and other essential services.

The Coca-Cola Company
In 2010, the Coca-Cola Company publicly pledged to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs by 2020 through their 5by20® initiative, by providing access to business skills training, mentoring networks, financial services, and assets. Together with their public and private sector partners, including bottling partners and The Coca-Cola Foundation, they exceeded their target, enabling the economic empowerment of more than 6 million women.

Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture
Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture is partnering with Feed the Future-funded USAID Yalwa Activity. Yalwa’s Women’s Self-Development and Empowerment trains women to grow as farmers and leaders in their community, share their experience and skills in farming, and develop a personal action plan to strengthen income generation activities.

DAI
DAI is working with USAID’s School-Based Violence Prevention Activity to address the high rates of femicide in Latin America. The program works in 200 schools across 11 cities to help students feel safer in school so they can commit to their education, graduate, and pursue careers in their communities. The program integrates a gender and social inclusion (GESI) lens in raising awareness, mainstreaming gender topics, and addressing social perceptions of equity as part of an integrated approach to reducing gender-based violence.

DT Global
DT Global’s USAID Climate Ready is supporting the Fiji Development Bank (FDB) to strengthen its commitment to Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI). USAID Climate Ready works closely with the Fiji Development Bank on integrating the policy within its operations. The FDB is changing how it does business, now offering a greater range of services and loan products to women, allowing them to improve the resilience of their families and reduce vulnerability to natural disasters and the effects of climate change.

Education Development Center
In Uganda, Education Development Center and USAID’s Integrated Child And Youth Development (ICYD) Activity works to tackle the challenges of gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The project leverages the Uganda Ministry of Health Community’s curriculum and uses a peer-based referral pathway to protect 9– to 14-year-olds in their communities.

Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation is partnering with young women, like Hawa, to support them through their HIV journey. Hawa is from Malawi and received HIV services and psychosocial support through the programming funded by the Foundation. This support has helped Hawa rise up as a peer leader, who has impacted other women and girls in her community.

FHI 360
FHI 360, through the Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) project, is training ambassadors of the Service Workers in Group, or SWING, program in Thailand. SWING reaches out to local communities to help provide services such as testing, prevention, and referral to treatment for both HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for sex workers, transgender people, and men who have sex with men.

Friends of the Global Fight
Friends of the Global Fight are partnering with the Friends of the Global Fund global network to tell the story of local champions in Niger, Indonesia, and Malawi who are fighting to end HIV, TB and malaria which are preventable and treatable diseases that claim over 2.65 million lives a year. Working with local communities and building more resilient health systems, the Global Fund invests more than $4 billion a year in programs run by local experts and governments.

Food for the Hungry
Food for the Hungry is supporting young mothers around the world to learn about improving their health by using hygienic latrines, drinking safe water, and properly washing hands. Women like Jorina are learning to become leaders in their communities and building happier and safer lives.

Global Environment & Technology Foundation
Global Water Challenge (GWC) is a coalition of leading organizations deploying expertise and networks to achieve universal access to safe and affordable drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in communities around the world. Grounded in the Ripple Effect Study, GWC established the Women for Water platform to mobilize collective action for clean water access for every woman and her community. Currently scaling impact in 26 countries, Women for Water measurably contributes to economic empowerment outcomes while raising awareness for this important issue.

Google
Lack of economic independence is one of the most significant obstacles in the rehabilitation process of survivors of domestic violence. Google and the Rashi Foundation together with Israel’s Ministries of Social Affairs and Economy, have developed “Her Way“. It is a unique program designed to assist survivors of domestic violence integrate into the tech industry. Through a gender-responsive, victim-centered approach, the program offers victims of domestic violence professional training, personal and emotional support and guidance from the beginning of the recruitment process through their ultimate employment.

International Fund for Animal Welfare
Together with the German foundation Margarete-Breuer Stiftung (MBS), the International Fund for Animal Welfare is supporting 60 women in the Amboseli community with three-year vocational skills training in professions such as hairdressing, dressmaking, and catering. The Jenga Mama (Swahili for “Empower a Woman”) education project will equip these women with the tools to set up microenterprises successfully to generate sustainable incomes for their families and communities.

International Youth Foundation
International Youth Foundation’s Conectadas Sureste Program will connect 2,300 underrepresented young women ages 16-29 from the Southeast region to basic, well-paying jobs in the digital economy. In addition to providing them with technical skills certifications -which are highly valued in the industry – this program will provide comprehensive support, guidance, and mentoring as well as an awareness campaign to sensitize parents, employers, and civil society about gender and cultural biases.

IREX
Many women journalists are bravely reporting from the front lines of Ukraine. Partnering with the Space Industry for Ukraine initiative, IREX’s Ukraine Media Partnership Program provided journalists with protective equipment and resources to continue reporting under dangerous conditions. With additional funding from the National Security Space Association, IREX provided media workers from 16 outlets with personal protection equipment including body armor, helmets, and first aid kits.

Jhpiego
Jhpiego is investing in the 1.8 billion adolescents and young people between the ages of 10 and 24 around the world. Investments in their health and education can transform their lives and produce positive economic and social results. Women like Arlene in the Philippines are receiving help and care from Jhpiego-trained midwives to learn how to be able to choose when, and if, to have a family.

Management Sciences for Health (MHS)
Management Sciences for Health (MSH) has partnered with the USAID-funded Assistance for Families and Indigent Afghans to Thrive (AFIAT) project in Afghanistan and is training midwives on an innovative approach that promotes a person-centered, culturally appropriate, group-based model of antenatal care. The model fundamentally shifts the power dynamics between patient and provider.

Merck
Merck recently announced the latest round of global grants through Merck for Mothers, the company’s global initiative dedicated to helping end preventable maternal deaths around the world. Focused on Latin America, these grants will support organizations in Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Mexico to provide access to high-quality maternal health and family planning services. Since its inception in 2012, the Merck for Mothers program has supported over 70 diverse projects in more than 45 global sites and has reached more than 4.7 million women.

NCBA|CLUSA International
Through its USAID-funded Cooperative Development Program (CDP) project, NCBA CLUSA partnered with Social Capital Foundation, the Association of Friends of Lake Atitlán, and women’s groups in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala to help women take the next steps in their recycling business journey. The women have expanded their vision from a business focused on collecting, sorting, and selling recyclable materials to a recycling business focused on product transformation and value addition for local, national, and international markets.

Palladium
Palladium is leading Data.FI, a USAID-funded project that helps improve HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 outcomes in 26 countries through the power of data. Women like Nigeria’s Dorcas Essien and Nonye Nwanya are breaking barriers and defying the odds and are part of an elite team of digital health practitioners implementing the program despite the fact that women represent less than 30 percent of the global tech sector workforce.

Panagora Group
Panagora’s team in the Philippines worked to document and integrate best practices of a long-term Filipino association of midwives (Integrated Midwives Association of the Philippines or IMAP), which USAID has supported for decades and is a success story of the long partnership between the two countries. The association works to highlight and professionalize the critical and often overlooked work of midwives and help them become self-reliant.

Pathfinder International
Pathfinder International implements the Ma’an project in Egypt that provides family planning services to women and girls in Sohag governorate. Ma’an also uses interactive and participatory approaches with communities to change harmful gender norms that hold women and girls back. We’ve recently integrated a climate resilience approach into this program. It includes creating “green health clinics” that offer family planning services to women and girls and working with women and girls on community-based solutions to climate resilience.

PepsiCo
In 2018, The PepsiCo Foundation invested $18.2 million in CARE’s She Feeds the World Program (SFtW) to address inequality in agriculture, increase access to food, water and nutrition, enhance economic opportunity, and build resilient food systems. PepsiCo’s investment in SFtW aims to empower five million women farmers and their families by providing access to land, agricultural tools, financing, and markets to improve their farming outputs and support economic empowerment.

Phrma
Phrma just published a new report, “Closing the Gender Gap in Innovation: The Biopharmaceutical Industry Leads the Way.” The report notes that leaders across the innovative biopharmaceutical industry recognize that the research and development (R&D) enterprise is most productive when a diverse range of perspectives is considered. As a result, PhRMA members have reached millions of students and teachers through STEM programs specifically for women and girls.

Plan International USA
Plan International USA is all about helping girls take the lead so that they can access their rights, clear their paths ahead, and create the futures they want for themselves. Here are five young women from around the world who are showing that young women leading the way can forge a better path forward for everyone.

RTI International
The USAID Sustainable Fish Asia Local Capacity Development Activity, which RTI implements, is supporting women in the fisheries sector in Southeast Asia and the Coral Triangle Region, including in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program supports women through leadership, empowerment, networking, and technical training.

Save the Children
Last year, Save the Children sponsored a round table for girl leaders from the U.S., Albania, Sierra Leone, and Venezuela and members of the U.S. Administration. Participants joined to discuss the importance of girls’ civic and political leadership and participation around the world in advance of the 2023 Summit for Democracy. Girls are the experts of their own lives and have the right to influence policies that impact them.

Tetra Tech
Tetra Tech implements USAID’s Engendering Industries program that collaborates with companies to develop a unique business case for advancing gender equality at the organization, articulating how retention, revenue, and profitability could increase as gender equality increases. Using the business case as an advocacy tool, Engendering Industries generates buy-in from top executives, trains company staff, and coaches the organization to implement proven interventions that nudge gender equality forward at each phase of the employee life cycle. 

U.S. Chamber of Comerce
In collaboration with UPS, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is helping women succeed in international markets. SheTrades and UPS work with women entrepreneurs to help them get closer to the market with their products and to expand to new markets. Two hundred and fifty Mexican women gathered at the Mexican Pavilion at the 2020 Dubai Expo to show off their weaving skills in partnership with UPS.

UNICEF USA
UNICEF is helping countries build stronger educational systems that address girls’ needs and bolster their progress. UNICEF also supports local programs that remove major obstacles to girls’ education, such as child marriage and child labor. In partnership with local supporters, UNICEF USA has advocated for the passage The Keeping Girls in School Act, designed to harness the power of the US Government to address these barriers preventing girls from getting an education.

Wildlife Conservation Society
The Wildlife Conservation Society sponsored the 5th Women in Fisheries Forum in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Green Climate Fund. The forum focused on understanding the role of women in the coastal zone and fisheries sector. The forum also addressed the role of women in responding to the impacts of climate change, gender strategy development, and identification of opportunities for building climate resilience.

World Vision
World Vision partnered with USAID-funded Women Empowered for Leadership and Development (WELD) program in Sierra Leone and worked to empower women and advance their socio-economic and political leadership, working to address social and cultural barriers to women’s civic engagement and economic advancement. This promising practice presents evidence suggesting the WELD project supported, empowered, and helped promote women’s social, political, and economic rights as well as equal and inclusive engagement.