Vulnerable populations, including women and girls, are among those disproportionately affected by poor access to economic empowerment opportunities and inadequate WASH services. This increases their risk of injury, illness, harassment, and violence.
To address this, World Vision’s past work has accommodated the needs of women and girls,
specifically considering their needs in infrastructure design. Our vision going forward is to provide even more transformative WASH services that appropriately respond to and reflect the choices and desires of the most vulnerable members of communities where we work.
World Vision’s SWSW: Beyond Access program helps remove barriers and open doors so women and girls can shine. We launched this program with a clear goal to go beyond providing access to conventional WASH and livelihoods programs by truly placing women at the center of all program activities. By intentionally designing WASH, economic empowerment, and microfinance activities to build upon each other, we nurture women’s confidence and skills and address systemic barriers to their participation and agency.
Through deliberate WASH and economic empowerment activities, we work side by side with community members to nurture equitable participation, ownership, and decision-making for
community transformation. When a woman has access to clean water nearby, it opens a fountain of opportunities, especially economic freedom.
This three-year program (2022–2025) spans four countries—Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, and
Zimbabwe—to define, refine, and measure a scalable, effective programmatic model to empower women and girls through transformative WASH and economic opportunities.
We are proud to be reviewed and held accountable by these independent third-party organizations:
