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During the dry season in West Pokot, Kenya, women can now dig into the sand to fetch water stored in subsurface dams.
Photo: Stephen Speakman/CWS
March 5, 2008
New York -- Church World Service joins people from around the world in celebrating International Women's Day (www.internationalwomensday.com) on March 8.
Our work to empower women through development, education and advocacy are ongoing. On this day of commemoration we highlight some of those programs and the global partnerships that enable us to work with women in developing nations to improve their status and achieve true security for themselves and their families.
CWS Director of Education and Advocacy Rajyashri Waghray says it is vital that women and girls, who often live in environments where they are not valued as contributing members of society, be empowered.
"Investment in women, across various population groups, has a multiplier effect: It not only increases the returns on a project but surpasses even that in the enormity of its social impact," says Waghray.
One of the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by the United Nations and the international community, is to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty and to substantially improve health and education in impoverished countries by 2015. Many of the world's most impoverished people are women.
"The lack of political will to invest in women by providing them with critical services like access to water, impedes their progress toward improved health, education and livelihoods" and takes a major toll on society, Waghray cautions.
"This in turn decreases the likelihood of reducing by half poverty and hunger in Africa, and substantially reducing it in Asia and Latin America. The end result is that efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 are thrown off course," says Waghray.
In partnership with local organizations around the globe, Church World Service supports a broad range of programs to empower women to progress from poverty to secure livelihoods within their communities.
Read some of the success stories and celebrate International Women's Day by learning how you can empower women.
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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