Capacity Statement
Capacity Statement
The Facts
- Gender equality is the state or condition that affords women and girls, men and boys, equal enjoyment
of human rights, socially valued goods, opportunities, and resources. It includes expanding freedoms and voice, improving power dynamics and relations, transforming gender roles, and enhancing overall quality of life so that males and females achieve their full potential (GFTN, 2020). - Social inclusion seeks to address inequality and/or exclusion of vulnerable populations by improving terms of participation in society and enhancing opportunities, access to resources, voice, and respect for human rights. It seeks to promote empowerment and advance peaceful and inclusive societies and institutions.
Overview
Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) is an essential process of change that overcomes barriers that prevent the most vulnerable children and adults from achieving their full potential. At World Vision, we seek to increase access to health, education, water, child protection, and livelihoods for the most vulnerable children and their families throughout the world so they can enjoy life in all its fullness. We empower vulnerable adults and children to fully participate in social, economic, and political processes. We promote equal decision- making and transform systems—the formal (such as laws and markets) and informal (eg., customary)—and create an enabling environment for more sustainable change.
We promote gender equality and social inclusion together because people are defined
by many different social factors, not only gender. Other social factors vary according to context, including ethnicity, religion, disability, age, health (e.g., HIV status), socio-economic status nationality and migrant status. World Vision’s GESI work is guided by our GESI Approach and Theory of Change and implementation guided by a GESI design, monitoring and evaluation (DME) toolkit, sector-specific reference guides and staff training for both development and emergency contexts. Our programs address five GESI domains of change —access, participation, decision-making, systems, and well-being which support agency, transformation and empowerment (see Figure 1.1)
Contact us
Get in touch with our experts to discuss how we can create impact together.
Problem statment
Gender equality
Women and girls, in particular, experience interpersonal and systematic gender inequality. The scope and impact of different types of gender inequality are numerous -from unequal access to education, land, credit to gender-based violence (GBV). In its extreme form, GBV is manifests through crimes such as rape and harmful practices such as child marriage. Most forms of GBV are subtle and pervasive and can include the restriction of behaviors and control over women’s choices and resources.
If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase their agricultural yields by 20-30%—increasing total agricultural output in low-to-middle income countries by 2.5-4%— translating into significant increases in addressing hunger for 100 to 150 million persons (FAO, 2011).
GBV is deeply rooted in gender inequality, cultural norms that assert men’s superiority and power over women, and rigid gender roles. Four percent of girls are married before age 15 in low- to-middle income countries—41% are married before age 18. (UNICEF). Promoting gender equality not only helps to ensure that development gains are sustained, but also allows all people to exercise their rights and agency, access and control of resources, determine their life outcomes, and influence decision-making in households, communities, and societies.
Social inclusion
It is not just women and girls that face inequality. Different groups around the world face exclusion and inequalities, with each context being different. These excluded groups include persons with disabilities, older persons, youth, minority ethnic and religious groups, persons living with HIV/AIDS and other stigmatized health conditions, people living in extreme poverty, migrants and refugees. Persons with disability and indigenous peoples face exclusion in almost every country:
- Persons with disability: Around 15% of the world’s population lives with a disability— making this population group the world’s largest minority (WHO,2011). Ninety percent of children with disabilities in low to middle-income countries do not attend school (UNICEF 2016); only 3% of adults with disabilities around the world are literate. (UNDP, 1998).
- Indigenous peoples: There are 476 million indigenous peoples across 90 countries , providing critical cultural values and knowledge (IWGA). However, they continue
to be marginalized and excluded from their nation’s social, economic, and political systems and have to protect their land and way of life. They often have significantly lower levels of literacy, life expectancy and higher levels of poverty and malnutrition.
World Vision’s distinctives in addressing GESI
- We have prioritized GESI in our strategy and operations and across our programming through the creation of GESI management and safeguarding policies, GESI DME resources, and establishment of GESI focal points in each national/regional office. Recognizing that gender and social inclusion intersect to heighten vulnerability, World Vision ensures that holistic approaches addressing the diverse and specific needs of vulnerable groups are appropriately integrated into our programming.
- We have a long-established presence in nearly 100 countries and reach local communities through our Sponsorship programs; this provides us with the relationships, trust, time and opportunity needed to shift gender and social norms, make systems more equal and encourage participation from all groups at all levels.
- We use faith-based approaches, including our Channels of Hope methodology, to work with faith leaders from Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths to shift gender and social norms in their communities and take GESI-related actions to address inequality in their communities.
- We use our social accountability model, Citizen,VoiceandAction(CVA),to engage women and other excluded groups in bottom-up advocacy and action that removes inequality from local and national systems.
Multisectoral approach to GESI
World Vision’s sector programs are designed to address issues of gender equality and social inclusion.
Food Security and Livelihoods
Gains have been underpinned by a transformation in gender and social norms. The USAID-funded Nobo Jatra program, focusing on improved gender equitable food security, nutrition, and resilience of vulnerable people in Bangladesh, facilitates training for women in literacy, numeracy, and technical skills and support vulnerable groups’ participation in production. Since project inception, over 8,600 women have been trained on alternative income generation, translating into increased incomes for participant households.
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene
As the largest global, non-governmental provider of water, World Vision has promoted the role of women and other vulnerable groups in water management committees and other leadership roles, ensuring that decisions made on water are meeting their specific and diverse needs. We construct water points and latrines that are accessible for persons with disabilities and ensure that girls have access to girl friendly latrines and menstrual pads to keep them in school.
Education
World Vision has used its Safe and Nurturing Schools model to ensure that girls can safely continue their education, free from sexual and gender-based violence. We have co-funded the All Children Reading Grand Challenge with USAID and the Australian government, including innovations designed to help children with disabilities to learn to read. Our electronic program management and data collection tool, MEQA, helps teachers and administrators to assess if girls, boys, children with disabilities and other excluded groups benefit equally from instruction and if the learning environment supports inclusion.
Youth
World Vision has used its positive youth development approach (Youth Ready) to support vulnerable youth. As part of our USAID- funded Community Roots program in Guatemala, nearly 70% of youth engaged in basic education programs are indigenous females and youth are offered counseling based on indigenous belief systems. Within the USAID-funded Puentes program in Guatemala, nearly 800 youth with disabilities have completed the ‘diplomado’ life skills program and are pursuing education, employment, or entrepreneurial activities.
Health
We implemented a USAID DREAMS-funded program, SAGE, targeting adolescent girls at risk for HIV and GBV in Uganda to keep them in school. We also supported address of practical and systemic barriers vulnerable groups encountered in accessing health services such as health infrastructural enhancements in the form of ramps and those that are wheelchair accessible.
SAGE-DREAMS reduced school dropout and HIV infection among 38,750 adolescent girls and young women in secondary school, providing in school testing and addressing socio-economic factors to prevent school dropout. HIV testing among AGYW participants increased to over 90% by endline (World Vision, 2019).
Child Protection
We ensure that the most vulnerable children can live free from violence, harm, and discrimination. Our girl empowerment programming in Kenya addresses child marriage and female genital mutilation and strives to keep girls in school. Our US Department of Labor programming in Mexico ensures that vulnerable indigenous girls and women can access safe, decent employment opportunities in the coffee and sugar industries.
STOP GBV, established 16 one- stop centers, serving 63,000 survivors with comprehensive services for children and adults. It also engaged with faith leaders to challenge gender norms using World Vision’s Channels of Hope.
We have also implemented GESI- specific programming including our USAID- funded STOP GBV program which institutionalized district- level “one-stop shops” for GBV survivors in Zambia; the USAID-funded WELD project in Sierra Leone that encouraged women’s participation and representation in government decision-making, planning and monitoring processes; and the USAID-funded TEAM project in Colombia, that worked with local government and disabled person organizations to identify and refer persons with disabilities to health care providers and tested innovations such as telemedicine and mobile clinics to reach participants residing in remote areas. We have used CVA, our social accountability model, to empower persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups to understand and advocate for their rights and increase their role in decision-making.
Learn more at worldvision.org/genderequality
SOURCE
Fisher, M. B., Shields, K. F., Chan, T. U., Christenson, E., Cronk, R. D., Leker, H., Samani, D., Apoya, P., Lutz, A. and Bartram, J. (2015), Understanding hand pump sustainability: Determinants of rural water source functionality in the Greater Afram Plains region of Ghana. Water Resour. Res.. 51(10): 8431-8449. doi:10.1002/2014WR016770
Contact us
Get in touch with our experts to discuss how we can create impact together.
