Power To Change Fund Success stories

Since its beginning the World YWCA Power to Change Fund has been making a positive difference to lives of women and young women around the world. Direct grant making to YWCA Member Associations has meant that projects have benefited from a capacity building approach The Power to Change Fund provides innovative leadership programmes and empowering opportunities through dialogues, training and sharing of experiences and skills at regional, national and global advocacy platforms. Projects in 2011 included a range of YWCA initiatives from around the world on violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV, and economic empowerment. Three such projects were carried out in Myanmar, Colombia and Tanzania.

The Power to Change Fund is a permanent fund of the World YWCA, which endows leadership development programmes for women and girls worldwide. A number of exciting and empowering projects were successfully developed in 2011. The YWCA of Finland was one of the member associations that successfully applied to the power to change fund.

Thanks to funds acquired through the Power to Change (P2C) Fund, the YWCA of Sri Lanka provides guidelines and basic knowledge for young women to deal with social issues.

A successful project for the rights of Romanian youth was developed thanks to the Power to Change Fund. The project aims to create a non-formal educational programme to promote social, economic, girls/youth rights and advocacy. Three schools participated in the project, and young people were informed on their rights under the European Union and Romanian labour codes. 

The Power to Change Fund project in Malawi began in March 2010. The project focuses on youth capacity building in HIV and adult literacy issues by raising awareness on HIV to reduce stigma and discrimination, empowering youth by encouraging leadership on human rights issues and HIV, and also increasing the capacity of the YWCA to respond effectively.

The Power to Change Fund is a permanent fund of the World YWCA, that endows leadership development programs for women and girls worldwide. A number of exciting and empowering projects have been successfully developed since April 2009, when the Fund policy began to allow direct grant-making to YWCA member associations. Three such projects are those carried out in Georgia, Argentina and Solomon Islands.

In many part of the world, promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights especially healthy and pleasurable sex lives can be challenging when this conflicts cultural beliefs. A project run by the YWCA of Zambia affirmed that young people are affected by traditional cultures, misconceptions and denial of young people as rights holders. All of this impedes their ability to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections especially HIV and unintended and early pregnancies.

Imagine not having access to clean water for your daily needs and having to walk many miles every day to fetch water. Unfortunately, this is the daily reality of many women and girls worldwide - but women from the YWCA of Kenya are now making clean water the new reality for the South Asembo District.

With the objective of promoting social and economic rights through advocacy and related programmes and service, the “Youth Rights of the Romanian Young Women, Girls and Teenagers, a European life” programme was launched. Thanks to the funding received from the World YWCA Power to Change Fund, the National Young Women’s Christian Association of Romania (ANTFCR) was able to start the programme, which targets young people in Romanian high schools.

Through the financial assistance of the Power to Change Fund, another programme dream became a reality. The YWCA of Albania in January 2010 launched their project “HIV prevention and building a young women peer-educator network amongst the Roma Community.” The project, which is directed at the Roma women within Albania, focuses mainly on young women and addresses the issue of HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) in the communities of Shkodra and Fier.