TFG Charity of the Month

WOMAN POWER
FROM VICTIM TO VICTOR, WOMEN ACROSS THE WORLD ARE ABLE TO SURVIVE AND THEN THRIVE WITH THE HELP OF WOMEN FOR WOMEN INTERNATIONAL. HERE, RICKI WEISBERG, THE ORGANIZATION'S STRATEGIC INITIATIVES MANAGER, TELLS YOU HOW.

THE FAMILY GROOVE: What is the mission of Women for Women International?
RICKI WEISBERG: Women for Women International provides women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies. We envision a world where no one is abused, poor, illiterate or marginalized; where members of communities have full and equal participation in the processes that ensure their health, well-being and economic independence; and where everyone has the freedom to define the scope of their lives, their futures and to strive to achieve their full potential.

TFG: How does the organization power its mission?
RW: Women for Women International mobilizes women to change their lives by bringing a holistic approach to addressing the unique needs of women in conflict and post-conflict environments. We begin by working with women who may have lost everything in conflict and often have nowhere else to turn. Participation in our one-year program launches women on a journey from victim to survivor to active citizen. We identify services to support graduates of the program as they continue to strive for greater social, economic and political participation in their communities.

As each woman engages in a multi-phase process of recovery and rehabilitation, she opens a window of opportunity presented by the end of conflict to help improve the rights, freedoms and status of women in her country. As women who go through our program assume leadership positions in their villages, actively participate in the reconstruction of their communities, build civil society, start businesses, train other women and serve as role models, they become active citizens who can help to establish lasting peace and stability.

A Kosovo woman graduates

Women begin in our Sponsorship Program where direct financial aid from a sponsor helps them deal with the immediate effects of war and conflict such as lack of food, water, medicine and other necessities. Exchanging letters with sponsors provides women with an emotional lifeline and a chance to tell their stories —maybe for the first time. As their situations begin to stabilize, women in our program begin building a foundation for their lives as survivors.

While continuing to receive sponsorship support, women embark on the next leg of the journey and participate in the Renewing Women’s Life Skills (ReneWLS) Program that provides them with rights awareness, leadership education and vocational and technical skills training. Women build upon existing skills and learn new ones in order to regain their strength, stability and stature on the path to becoming active citizens.

Women for Women International believes that establishing a means to earn a sustainable living is critical to being fully active in the life of a family, community and country. To help women transform their new skills into financial independence and sustainability, we offer job skills trainings to strengthen women’s existing skills and to introduce new skills in traditional and non-traditional fields so women can access future employment opportunities.

Building on the skills training program, we offer comprehensive business services designed to help women start and manage their own micro-enterprises. We give them access to capital and operate microcredit programs in Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina with an overall repayment rate of 98 percent. We give women access to markets by facilitating product sales through outside retailers and our online Virtual Bazaar. We provide expertise such as product design, production assistance and business development workshops. We also help women form micro-enterprises such as production facilities and cooperative stores to sell the goods women produce.

TFG: When and why was it started?
RW: Women for Women International was started in1993 and has helped thousands of socially excluded women, who are often a family’s sole breadwinner and caregiver, to overcome the horrors of war and civil strife —family loss and widowhood, rape, murder, forced migration, poverty, starvation, trafficking and torture —in ways that can help them rebuild their lives, families and communities.

The organization was founded by Zainab Salbi and Amjad Atallah, who were motivated to act after learning of the plight of women in rape camps in the former Yugoslavia and the slow response of the international community. The organization launched its activities by creating “sister-to-sister” connections between sponsors in the United States and women survivors of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In its first year, Women for Women International worked with eight women, distributing about $9,000 in direct aid. As the organization gained experience in the field, its staff came to understand that financial assistance alone was not enough to create deeper change in the lives of women who had lost everything. Women, especially those widowed by war, needed to develop marketable skills, cultivate an understanding of their rights and potential as women and create secure ways to earn an income for years to come. In so doing, women could gradually build the strength and stature they needed to survive the horrors of war and eventually become active members of their communities.

Since 1993, Women for Women International has expanded its operations to serve 153,000 women survivors of war and distributed $42 million in direct aid and microcredit loans. Women for Women International now serves women in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan and builds one-to-one connections with more than 23,000 sponsors in all 50 states of the U.S. and 55 other countries.

TFG: How does Women for Women decide where to give its aid and support?
RW: Women for Women International utilizes four criteria when determining how and when to expand its programs to new areas of operation. The organization seeks to work: 1) in conflict or post-conflict countries or regions; 2) where women are disproportionately affected by war and violence; 3) where these women's needs are not being met and the organization's programs can fill a critical gap in services; and 4) when the organization has the resources to launch and sustain a program that can grow and expand over time to meet the long-term needs of women survivors of war.

TFG: What do we need to know about the current state of in-need women worldwide?
RW:Across the globe, undeclared wars and internal armed conflicts have reached an unprecedented number. There have been more than 250 major wars since the end of World War II, resulting in over 23 million casualties. In today’s wars, there are fewer distinctions between combatants and civilians. Ninety percent of casualties are civilians, 75 percent of whom are women and children; a century ago, 90 percent of war casualties were male soldiers. While war exacts a high toll on all members of affected communities, the full impact of armed conflict on women has been historically neglected.

Although women play multiple roles during and after conflict, men and women often have different experiences in the conflict and post-conflict environment. Women rarely have the same access as men to economic, political and educational resources yet often become responsible for supporting a household. Women also bear the additional burden of physical and psychological trauma and social stigma that result from the rape and sexual violence that are frequently used as weapons of war.

TFG: What are the organization's short-term and long-term goals?
RW: Women for Women International supports socially excluded women emerging from war and community violence through a multi-layered core program of direct aid and sponsorship, rights-based education and economic development. Underlying all program activities is the goal of helping women advance from being victims to attaining stability as survivors with the skills to become active members of their communities. We clearly see our long-term goal to create stable and peaceful societies. The only way we see how to do this is women led community change and women must be able to feed their families before they can think about creating change.

TFG: What can our readers do to help?
RW: To help a woman survivor of war rebuild her life and become an active citizen in her family and community, sponsor a woman for $27 a month. Visit www.womenforwomen.org and join tens of thousands of women who are committed to helping women rebuild and regain the strength she needs to make a better life for herself and her family.

The Story of Sadije Bublaku: A Kosovar Woman Who Triumphs Against All Odds
Picture yourself living in Kosovo in 1997. You have a good life. You’re married; you have four wonderful children, two boys and two girls. Your husband has a good job. He is a successful farmer with all the equipment he needs.

Then within a year your life is changed forever. It’s 1998. Your country is at war. You’re separated from your husband and children and forced to endure the touches and taunts of men from foreign armies. In 1999 you’re forced to leave your home. You take refuge in villages and end up hiding in a cave deep within the mountains.

Serbian forces keep your family apart. And when they do reunite you it is only to force you and your small, helpless children to watch their father being beaten. Their attack is so brutal and harsh he is left deaf in one ear. These horrors are so unspeakable that even nearly ten years later, your children are suffering the psychological consequences. Even your own memories haunt you. You recall these savage attacks and you sit shaking and frightened, just as if it is happening again.

Sadije Bablaku

What would you do? Sadije Bablaku found the conviction and strength within herself to push past her own fears, and join Women for Women International.

Sadije received important rights training and education so she could help prevent these atrocities of war from ever happening again. But helping herself and her own family was not enough for this caring and courageous woman.

Sadije no longer attends Women for Women International programs. She runs them. Sadije is a community leader and conducts the programs in her own home. When asked why she would hold meetings in her own home Sadije answers, “I don’t want to see women with dropped hands. I want to see women working to improve their lives. I want to see them help themselves and their children.” She is so inspiring that women travel for 30 minutes or more on foot, just to attend the programs.

But Sadije is a remarkable woman who stops at nothing. Not too long ago Sadije did the unthinkable for a Kosovar woman. She took 90 women from her village who were graduating from their Women for Women International training programs on a trip around Kosovo.

Typical graduation, right? Not so in Kosovo. In a country where women are not allowed outside their homes alone, or their villages for that matter, this was an unheard of, unthinkable journey.

Yet Sadije collected money and organized buses. And 90 remarkable women took a 12-hour trip around the country, many seeing outside their own homes and villages for the very first time. When they reached the village of Iscog for lunch, a group of men asked if they were teachers. And they said, “No. We are not employed. We are graduating from our Women for Women International training program and wanted to see our country.” The men were shocked. They said, “No. It isn’t possible.” And so Sadije showed them her ID as proof. This identification card not only showed these men who they were, but who they had become.

You might expect that these women are facing difficult times in their own village and their own homes. But this is truly a story of triumph, because thankfully the opposite is true. The men are seeing that the women are happy. And they are realizing that when a woman has confidence, self-esteem and feels happy that their families and communities are happier too.

When asked about her life in 2007 Sadije says, “I feel so good. My life has changed so much. I am so happy to work with the women that I don’t ever get tired. Thank you to people who have helped me so much.”

THE FAMILY GROOVE donates a percentage of its revenue to its featured Charity of the Month.