Putting the International focus back into International Women’s Day.

International Women’s Day has developed into a great day for us all to reflect on the progress we have made toward gender balance in Aotearoa. 

We are at the forefront of gender balance. We were the first country to give women the right to vote and we have continued to be an example of how to make room for women to realise their futures.

There is hope for women across our country.

We definitely have the leadership thing down pat and there is momentum to get more women in positions of authority than ever before. 

Government, businesses and social action groups are starting to wake up to the fact that we need to really understand and cater for the needs of women to be a flourishing society. That includes women who want to be educated, women who want to be CEOs and Directors on Boards, women who want to stay at home and care for their children. All women are an important and integral part of our society. 

We know there are still issues to address such as our atrocious rates of domestic violence, pay parity, and increasing women’s representation at the higher levels of government and business so that there continues to be a diversity of thought and opinion. But there is no denying that women in Aotearoa have made significant progress. We will continue to gain traction with these issues and maintain our place as leaders in the gender balance discussion. 

The same cannot be said for the women that we partner with everyday in our fight to end hunger and poverty. The areas where we work have never been places where women have prospered. The issues are more basic and the reality is more stark.

In the developing world, more than 13 million girls under the age of 18 will be married in 2020.

That is 13 million girls who have been denied education and the opportunity to choose how they live their life. 

This is where hunger stems from. It’s called the cycle of malnutrition. 

• A girl is born into a poor family, and she is not celebrated because her family cannot see how she will bring anything to them other than cost. 
• She is breastfed for a short window of time so that her mother can go back to working the fields as a day labourer to bring in income and become pregnant again more quickly with a boy. 
• She stays home to help her mother with the housework while her brothers go to school. 
• She is fed last, if at all. 
• She reaches puberty and is married as quickly as possible to reduce dowry payments. Even though this practice is illegal in many countries it still takes place.
• She becomes pregnant with a girl. 
• The cycle repeats. 

60% of the 821 million people living in hunger are women.

This problem will be perpetuated until we can address the gender inequities that exist within these communities. 

That's why the first pillar of our work in ending hunger is to empower women. By empowering women we break the cycle of malnutrition and start to open up a world of opportunity that leads to the sustainable end of hunger. 

• We bring them together and tell them of their opportunity to be activists for change in their communities.
• We teach them that child marriage is actually illegal in many of the places where they live. 
• We provide them with education opportunities. 
• We instil in them leadership and we awaken their purpose. 
• We provide them with business mentoring and microfinance loans that can change their lives forever.
• We show them how, as a community of women, they can create powerful and lasting change in their villages. 

And they do!

When we invest in women, it has an amplifier effect in her community.

One woman changes her life, she then changes the life of her children, of her sisters, it feeds further into her community until the whole area prospers alongside her.

Help us to create a world where all women are given the opportunity to live fulfilling lives of self-reliance and dignity. The opportunity is there for us to change the world - one woman at a time.