Clean Water and Trainings for 100 Families

Let Us Build Ourselves - Kanombe has completed construction of their water venture, which is designed to serve 100 families with clean water to fight the underlying causes of violence and sexual exploitation of women while collecting water.  The venture is expecting to have the final hookup to the local municipal water pipeline next week and will begin selling water.  The team also conducted an issue study in their local community to establish a baseline against which they will work to improve the lives of women.  They discovered some shocking findings, including:

• 93% of respondents had contracted some form of water-borne disease
• 97% of women had experience conflict with their spouse due to the lack of water
• 87% had been forced to trade sex for water more than 6 times in the last year
• Only 13% had ever been tested for HIV
• It took women an average 2. 9 hours to collect water daily
• 93% of respondents said their children were late for school daily for helping to collect water

Once the venture is operational, when women come to collect water, the program will offer trainings on the importance of clean water and how to end violence against women. The training course will teach how women are important to community and family development, will highlight how women in high positions have made valuable contributions to society, and will share ways that men and women can respect one another.

GLOBAL GRASSROOTS UPDATE

We are excited to share, Global Grassroots has begun the development of a web-based eAcademy for Conscious Change, which will allow women’s groups in developing countries globally to access our social entrepreneurship curriculum online. To date, we have received emails from over 160 women’s groups from 45 different countries requesting our programs. We will be choosing a pilot group of women's organizations from four continents to participate in the beta version of the elearning program.  Our online academy will be accessible for free, providing an interactive program that will support the development of grassroots-level social entrepreneurship projects. We anticipate the development of the site will be complete in late autumn for piloting, with a public launch in early 2012.

Next week Global Grassroots will launch its new Conscious Social Change certification program, with seven women from three countries.  Once certified, this corps of trainees will be able to deploy globally to offer our core program upon request to partner organizations. Global Grassroots is eager to collaborate through partnership to support women change agents in new communities.

This progress has only been possible with your support and we extend our deepest gratitude.  As we expand, Global Grassroots needs engaged investors to help us make these exciting possibilities a reality. We know that women have the potential to lead conscious social change, but many lack the resources and training to advance their own ideas. Please consider a donation to help Global Grassroots continue to support the social ventures of grassroots change agents worldwide.