COVID-19 Response

About Sponsorship 

Along with impacting our country programs, the global pandemic has affected our sponsorship program. Sadly, restrictions due to COVID-19 mean that we can only safely resume training for women who had already begun the program. To start, we will invite women back in phases and into smaller classes, to help limit personal contact.

When women return to the program, sponsors who have already been matched will be able to continue supporting them.

Limiting contact for women’s safety and health means that we unfortunately cannot enroll more women into the program, due to currently suspending the larger recruitment events.  

Although we are not able to enroll new groups of women right now, please don’t let that stop you from signing up to sponsor a sister today. Your continued sponsorship support helps us develop the innovative solutions you see here, and continue to provide lifechanging wellness, economic and social empowerment training resources to our sisters. By signing-up to sponsor a sister now, you are helping us to ensure that we are able to continue our essential program and enroll even more women into our training as soon as it is safe to do so. 

Read Our COVID-19 Blogs & Updates

Distance Won’t Stop Our Support 

Across all our country programs, our teams have innovated solutions that help women protect against coronavirus while supporting them with the many other pressures that come alongside crisis. 

Mobilizing Women 

In countries such as Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, women in our program and graduates are using tailoring skills to sew masks. In many of these countries, they send masks to support local efforts, such as health workers and police officers, along with their own family and neighbors.  

Our DRC team has collaborated with women who produce soap by providing them materials, purchasing soap from them, and distributing them to other women in the program who need it.  

Graduates of our program have joined the local government response in Nigeria to educate people on COVID-19. 

Distributing Life Saving Resources 

We have distributed over 4,700 hygiene kits to women in Afghanistan, providing them with soap, hand sanitizer, masks, gloves, toilet paper, and even leaflets to remind them of how to prevent spreading the disease. 

Where possible, our teams have also continued providing women with their cash stipend. In South Sudan, women also receive bars of soap when they pick up their cash stipend.  

In some countries, women receive their stipends remotely through banks and mobile money transfers.  

Technological Innovations 

Our team has been using technology to stay connected to women’s needs and provide women with trustworthy, accurate health and hygiene information.  

Through cellphone groups on social media and apps like Viber, women in our Iraq program have been able to stay in contact and be each other’s support system. These groups have been crucial to addressing rising violence against women.  

Where women have less access to cellphones, our teams have worked with groups to set up communication trees to stay informed.  

Radio programs are both a popular and trustworthy medium in communities where we work. We have collaborated with health experts from the local government and NGOs to educate women and their communities on the pandemic through these programs. 

In Kosovo, though, where many women have more access to technology, our trainings have transitioned digitally, so women can continue learning remotely.