Resources
Research
Pact's Women's Empowerment Program in Nepal: A Savings-and Literacy-Led Alternative to Financial Institution Building [PDF]
Since 1999 Pact's Women's Empowerment Program (WEP) has strengthened the capacity of 6,500 savings and credit groups with 125,000 women members in rural Nepal. This impact evaluation discusses how the program reached so many groups so quickly; the quality of the groups it trained; and the impact WEP had on the women who are members of these groups. The study was written by Jeffrey Ashe, Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University, and Lisa Parrott, Technical Advisor in Microfinance at Freedom from Hunger. It was financed by USAID's Office of Microenterprise Development, Freedom from Hunger, the Overbrook Foundation and the Small Enterprise and Education Promotion (SEEP) network.
Relevant literature
Breaking the Mold
An overview of the Women's Empowerment Program in Nepal.
Toward a New Paradigm for Social and Economic Change: The Evolution of Pact's Women's Empowerment Program
Explains the evolution of Pact Nepal's programs from the early genesis of the Women Reading for Development (WORD) Project to the development of its Women's Empowerment Project (WEP).
Turning the Spotlight on Rural Women: Appreciative Planning and Action and Pact's Women's Empowerment Project
Malcolm J. Odell, Jr., Ph.D. discusses the role that Appreciative Planning and Action has played in helping to implement the Women's Empowerment Program in Nepal.
Appreciative Inquiry Commons
http://appreciativeinquiry.cwru.edu/
A worldwide portal devoted to the sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change.
Lessons from the Field: Applying Appreciative Inquiry edited by Sue Annis Hammon and Cathy Royal. Practical Press Inc., 1998.
Describes application of Appreciative Inquiry processes and theory.
General statistics and information
The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/ww2000/index.htm
The UN Statistics Division provides a comprehensive analysis of how women fare in different parts of the world. It highlights the main findings of statistical analysis on women's situation as compared to men's worldwide in a broad range of fields including families, health, education, work, human rights and politics.
UN WomenWatch
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/about/
Created to monitor the results of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, WomenWatch is a joint UN project to create a core Internet space on global women's issues.
Women's Action
http://www.womenaction.org/
Women's Action is a global information, communication and media network that enables NGOs to actively engage in the Beijing+5 review process with the long term goal of women's empowerment with a special focus on women and media.
GenderNet of The World Bank Development Group
http://www.worldbank.org/gender/
This site describes how the World Bank seeks to reduce gender disparities and to enhance women's participation in economic development through its programs and projects. It summarizes knowledge and experience, provides gender statistics, and facilitates discussion on gender and development.
The Virtual Library on Microcredit
http://www.gdrc.org/icm/
Comprehensive database for sources on microcredit.
The Global Policy Forum: Gender and Inequality
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/indexgen.htm
Features articles from 1995 to the present about the difficulties women face in a changing global economy and how women worldwide are mobilizing for change.
The Microcredit Summit Campaign
http://www.microcreditsummit.org/
Provides press releases, papers, interviews and coverage of workshops and meetings related to the global campaign to ensure that 100 million of the world's poorest families are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the year 2005.
Women Ink.
http://www.womenink.org/
Markets and distributes books on women and development with a focus on perspectives of women from the Global South.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html
Provides information, news and reports regarding CEDAW. Adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, CEDAW is often described as an international bill of rights for women.
International organizations
Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP)
http://www.cgap.org/
A consortium of donor agencies whose mission is to improve the capacity of microfinance institutions to deliver financial services to the very poor on a sustainable basis.
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
http://www.usaid.gov/
Provides U.S. foreign assistance to further America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world.
The World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org/
As one of the world's largest sources of development assistance, the World Bank works in more than 100 developing economies with the primary focus of helping the poorest people and the poorest countries.
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
http://www.unifem.undp.org/
Promotes women's empowerment and gender equality by working to ensure the participation of women in all levels of development planning and practice, and by acting as a catalyst within the UN system to support efforts that link the needs and concerns of women to all critical issues on the national, regional and global agendas.
The Ford Foundation
http://www.fordfound.org/
Encourages and supports initiatives that strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement.
Freedom from Hunger
http://www.freefromhunger.org/
Brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty. Developed the world's first integrated microcredit/health and nutrition education program known as Credit with Education.
Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA)
http://www.villagebanking.org/
Implementer of village banking microfinance projects in Latin America, Africa, and the NIS.
Women's World Banking
http://www.womensworldbanking.org/
Organizes support to affiliates who offer services to low income women, builds networks of microfinance institutions, and works with policy makers to build financial systems that work for the poor majority.
ACCION International
http://www.accion.org/
Provides credit and training to microenterprise entrepreneurs in Latin America and the United States.
Save the Children: Economic Opportunities Programs
http://www.savethechildren.org/economic.shtml
Focuses on building strong micro-finance institutions to reduce gender disparity and empower women to spend their additional income on children and their households.
The Asia Foundation: Women's Political Participation Program
http://www.asiafoundation.com/programs/prog-area-wome.html
The Foundation's Global Women in Politics program supports a wide range of initiatives that expand the role of women in public and political life.
Catholic Relief Services
http://www.catholicrelief.org/
Provides emergency relief services and development programs addressing health, human rights, and poverty in countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Online Resources/Blogs
Blogher BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. Here you can find links to a number of organizations working for gender equity.
http://www.blogher.org/
Social Edge
Check what expert bloggers have to say about social entrepreneurship... Every week is a new story on Social Edge.
http://www.socialedge.org/blogs
Week X Week
News of the Week from Peace X Peace, a global network seeking to improve the status of women and build sustainable peace.
http://www.weekxweek.blogspot.com/
Global Voices
Global Voices aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens' media by using a wide variety of technologies - weblogs, podcasts, photos, video, wikis, tags, aggregators and online chats - to call attention to conversations and points of view in hopes it will help shed new light on the nature of our interconnected world.
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/
