World Vision takes a two-part approach to women’s economic empowerment: we work to improve the skills, resources, power, and agency of women, while simultaneously addressing inequitable social and cultural norms, laws, and institutions to promote an enabling environment where both women and men can thrive. Using our core models of Savings for Transformation, Ultra-Poor Graduation, Building Secure Livelihoods, and microfinance, we focus on the following areas:, we focus on the following areas:

• Financial inclusion
• Entrepreneurship
• Inclusive market systems
• Male engagement for women’s empowerment

• Bangladesh: The USAID-funded Nobo Jatra project works to improve gender equitable food security, nutrition, and resilience among vulnerable people in southwest Bangladesh. In this area, Nobo Jatra facilitates training for women in literacy, numeracy, and technical skills. The project pursues production activities such as raising livestock, homestead production, and aquaculture, where female lead farmers are selected and trained to establish demonstration plots and sell produce in local markets. Lead farmers are linked to markets to access inputs and sell their products through linkages with collection centers. Over 8,600 women have been trained on Alternative Income Generating Activity (AlGA) trades such as hand embroidery, turkey rearing, tailoring, basketry, and dry fish processing. The women earn steady incomes — for each piece of hand embroidery completed, women earn an average of $75, a sizable amount in this area.
• Zimbabwe: Enhancing Nutrition, Stepping up Resilience and Enterprise (ENSURE), a USAID-funded program, empowered poor, rural households in the Manicaland and Masvingo provinces to become more food secure. Through this program, World Vision worked with both men and women to address the underlying causes of women’s continued marginalization. In 2017, farmers (almost 80% female) used information provided by market facilitators to substantially increase net revenue for goats, poultry, groundnuts, and sorghum value chains. At the household level, net revenue increased by 200% for goats, 95% for poultry, 23% for groundnuts, and 500% for sorghum. Additionally, after three years, men showed increases of 54% in fetching water, 64% in fetching firewood, and 56% in helping with vegetable gardening. Women increased time spent in rest and income generating activities. In 2017, the value of income from savings groups and farmers (majority female) increased from $3,255,149 at baseline to $5,380,560. Couples’ joint decision-making rose from 30% to 82% from year three to four.
• Global: Transforming Household Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE) is a five-year privately funded project targeting 486,530 smallholder farmers and reaching 2,611,742 household members in Honduras, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Drawing on our Empowered Worldview curriculum, the project focuses on increasing household income through interventions in end-to-end systems of farming, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction. In Tanzania, families are seeing an increase in their productive assets, enabling them to grow their own food and/or pursue an income generating activity that provides for family needs.

We are guided by our toolkit on integrating GESI in design, monitoring, and evaluation, which takes us through the following processes:

1. We always apply a GESI lens. World Vision sees GESI as a lens and is essential to addressing the root causes of inequality and exclusion for the most vulnerable children and adults in the countries where we work. For that reason, we incorporate inclusion, increased agency, and empowerment of excluded individuals and groups into our program objectives and theory of change.
2. Within any sector program, we use a GESI analysis to understand which individuals or groups are the most vulnerable: those who are excluded from services, assets, and decision-making; who lack access to economic, social, and political processes; and who are most impacted by inequalities in formal and informal systems at individual, household, community, and societal levels. We seek to understand how intersecting social identities impact vulnerability and to address barriers that may prevent certain groups from participating in or benefiting from programs.
3. We develop holistic sector programs that enhance the well-being of excluded populations and improve their access to assets and services. We create opportunities for excluded groups to participate in social, economic, and political activities and in decision-making, and we empower them to use these opportunities to have greater agency over key decisions that impact their well-being. We use our social accountability tool, Citizen Voice and Action, to empower excluded groups to challenge the inequalities in formal and informal systems.
4. We implement our programs in a socially inclusive way. We work with our staff to identify unconscious biases that may limit their ability to include all groups in our programs. We budget for an inclusion fund. We monitor and evaluate our programs using carefully selected, disaggregated data to make sure that excluded individuals and groups are both participating in and benefiting from our work. We also track progress in addressing gender and social norms that underlie exclusion. We include excluded groups in key informant interviews and focus groups during program evaluations.

People with disabilities experience exclusion not only because of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairments, but also because of societal barriers that limit meaningful participation. Though people with disabilities often need services such as rehabilitation or assistive technology, these services alone won’t address the root causes of exclusion. Only breaking down barriers in a community can do that.

To implement programs effectively, World Vision trains staff to understand disability issues and address any biases they may have toward people with disabilities. World Vision also provides training on how to support the consideration of disability issues throughout its project cycles. We use the CVA social accountability tool to support the inclusion of people with disabilities in social, political, and decision-making processes.

Advocacy

In Colombia, the USAID-funded Training, Economic Empowerment, Assistive Technology, and Medical/Physical Rehabilitation Services (TEAM) project engaged 2,749 people with disabilities in CVA processes. Each of the 18 groups produced an action framework. They prioritized the most frequently violated rights for people with disabilities, including delays in receiving care, the shortage of available appointments with health specialists, limited accessibility in parks and other community settings, and limited opportunities for employment and income generation. Local authorities listened to CVA groups and expressed verbal commitments to addressing the issues raised. Groups then monitored progress toward these commitments, resulting in 175 actions being directly attributed to CVA processes. Perhaps the greatest impact of the CVA groups was the strengthening of relationships around disability, resulting in greater solidarity, understanding, and support.

“The TEAM project and CVA helped a lot of people to understand, and to energize and gather people through the local action boards. I think it was a success.” — Jorge, project participant, Barranquilla

Education

Primary and pre-primary education: World Vision has integrated inclusive education into our two main program models, Learning Roots (ages 3 to 5) and Unlock Literacy (grades 1 to 3). Program delivery is universal in design, allowing children to receive information in different ways and to express their learning in different ways. Community-based reading camps supplement learning for children who need additional assistance to enhance their literacy. We also focus on increasing acceptance and creating a school environment that includes children with disabilities.

Malawi, our inclusive education program nearly doubled the number of children with disabilities attending school within a three-year period. We worked with 80 community leaders, including five chiefs, to shift negative norms around disability. As a result, 21% of adults interviewed said they had a child with a disability in their family, whereas previously, the disabilities were hidden.

Development of inclusive, accessible learning materials: All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) — a partnership of USAID, World Vision, and the Australian government — advances EdTech innovation and research to improve reading outcomes for marginalized children in low-resource contexts. Through global grant and prize competitions, ACR GCD identifies and brings to scale the most promising EdTech solutions for addressing barriers that prevent children with disabilities from learning to read. ACR GCD has also funded extensive research, including on the adaptation of the Early Grade Reading Assessment, to ensure children with disabilities are included in measurements of literacy acquisition and skills. Read more about All Children Reading’s innovations for children with disabilities.

Youth

In Guatemala, World Vision implements the USAID-funded Puentes Project to improve the quality of life for youth ages 15 to 24 in the country’s Western Highlands. This project focuses on particularly marginalized youth, including youth with disabilities. Vulnerable youth receive information and develop knowledge and skills to gain employment and economic opportunities, as well as education, health services, and social services. They also learn to engage the local government, the private sector, and service providers to improve access to quality services and generate new employment and economic opportunities. Puentes Project partners with a local federation of organizations of people with disabilities (OPD) to identify and recruit participants with disabilities and to ensure positive representation of youth with disabilities in the training materials and radio broadcasts. By partnering with an OPD and making activities and content accessible and communications inclusive, Puentes Project seeks to be transformational in increasing access to services, decision-making, equitable systems, and meaningful participation of people with disabilities.

Ethiopia, the Engaged, Educated, Empowered Ethiopian Youth (E4Y) project, funded by the United States Department of Labor, addressed exploitative child labor by promoting education and vocational training opportunities and enhancing livelihood opportunities and access to social protection programs for youth and their households. E4Y worked with male and female youth from 7,500 households in Ethiopia, emphasizing the inclusion of youth with disabilities while exploring opportunities for disability inclusion in the Ethiopian workplace. The project also focused on education by challenging teachers’ perceptions of gender norms and disability, aiming to improve teachers’ ability to meet the specific needs of children with disabilities. Youth with disabilities were provided with the necessary adaptive devices, such as eyeglasses, crutches, and wheelchairs, to access education and training.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene

Because World Vision often begins its work in communities with water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects, we recognize that these projects must be disability inclusive to:

• Achieve the basic human right to water and sanitation
• Reach the most vulnerable
• Set the tone for inclusion in other community-based projects to increase access

World Vision has worked with organizations of people with disabilities and nongovernmental organizations to develop activities that ensure that WASH programs are inclusive and that accessible infrastructure and adaptive devices are available. Please see our WASH page for more information on our WASH work.

Health

World Vision supports the inclusion of children and adults with disabilities in the provision of health services, including in accessible forms and locations. World Vision has implemented programs that provide wheelchairs and other specialized rehabilitation support. World Vision uses its extensive health partnerships in communities to identify people with disabilities, refers them to specialized disability service providers, and then follows up at the community level to make sure the services have improved their health and function.

With funding from USAID, World Vision led the Accelerating Core Competencies for Effective Wheelchair Service and Support (ACCESS) project in India, Nicaragua, Romania, El Salvador, and Kenya. ACCESS strengthened the wheelchair sector and ensured that people with mobility limitations could access appropriate wheelchairs through qualified service providers and enjoy full participation in their communities. The project provided wheelchair service to 7,319 clients and trained over 900 rehabilitation professionals using World Health Organization courses for wheelchair service. At the end of the project, 93% of wheelchair clients surveyed indicated that they experienced increased community participation, and 43 wheelchair service centers showed increased capacity for service.

This link between service provision and community development was the innovation of the ACCESS program, which is now being scaled up across World Vision’s wheelchair programs through our holistic approach.

The USAID-funded Training, Economic Empowerment, Assistive Technology, and Medical/Physical Rehabilitation Services project enabled 3,670 people with disabilities in Colombia to become more independent and integrated into society. The project used mobile clinics coupled with telemedicine to make assistive technology (AT) services more accessible to rural populations. World Vision worked with community-based partners and health systems to identify people for screening and ensure they had the correct documentation to access health insurance. An initial visit by a multidisciplinary team included a screening and assessment. A second visit provided AT devices. Follow-up was then provided through telemedicine that connected community-based primary health service providers with specialists.

Economic empowerment

People with disabilities and their families are more likely to be living in poverty because of lower levels of education, the cost of accessing health and rehabilitation services, and productivity lost when care is required for the person with a disability. When World Vision identifies a person with a disability, we ensure that they can access any financial assistance provided by the government and nongovernmental organization support programs.

The USAID-funded Training, Economic Empowerment, Assistive Technology, and Medical/Physical Rehabilitation Services project worked with people with disabilities and their families in Colombia to increase their economic well-being. The project organized them into productive groups and equipped them with the necessary skills and resources, like tools, to increase their income by an average of 28%. Participation in these groups also provided individuals living with disabilities with a critical source of emotional and informational support.

Learn more about some of World Vision’s promising practices by reviewing the Children with Disability: Promising Practices report.

Community Roots is a USAID-funded project in Guatemala that supports efforts by the Guatemalan government, civil society, private sector, and community actors to holistically address the underlying causes of violence and migration in Guatemala. It primarily targets children, youth, and young adults ages 8 to 24, and women in disadvantaged communities (such as Indigenous populations) that are characterized by high levels of crime, irregular migration, or both. The project also supports violence prevention projects for Indigenous youth, such as vocational training, job skills development, and targeted social services and entrepreneurship in coordination with municipal and local authorities.

USAID-funded Puentes Project for positive youth development seeks to improve the quality of life of young people ages 15 to 24. The project addresses the major drivers of undocumented foreign migration through access to employment, education, development, and improvement of well-being and quality of life. World Vision implements the project in partnership with a consortium of organizations with expertise in alternative education, workforce readiness, entrepreneurship, STEAM education, vocational training, agriculture, and Indigenous culture. Through the Puentes Project, Indigenous youth are empowered to take control of their future with information, knowledge, and skills to access opportunities and improve their income, and they are connected to support services that are critical to their overall well-being.

“The combination of ancestral knowledge with new technology strengthens youth identity and highlights its importance for issues such as community coexistence, productivity, and advocacy for a better future,” says Julio Dominguez, who oversees work on gender, disability, and Indigenous groups within the Puentes Project. He says that it is important to help people find tools that allow them to protect their cultural heritage and access training consistent with the needs of the current market.

World Vision’s Prevent Domestic Violence, Promote Gender Equality, and Transform Communities project in the Caribbean Coast in Nicaragua focused on gender-based violence prevention and response. It strengthened the technical skills of community service providers, improved shelters, and challenged harmful gender norms that perpetuate the acceptability of violence. This 2.5-year State Department-funded project used a survivor-centered approach to improve survivors’ access to quality services, safety and well-being, and economic empowerment, including among Indigenous populations.