Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

turned out, hundreds of Afghan women gathered at
that center and walked miles to the nearest voters’ registration
site. “They showed their voice through
action,” Ponticelli stressed. “This is the impact these
programs can have.”
Initiatives for Women
in All Regions
Other regions of the world are just as important
to the U.S. effort to enhance women’s political participation.
In post-conflict societies
from the former
Yugoslavia to Colombia
and the Congo, the
United States has led
efforts to ensure that
women are included as
planners, implementers,
and beneficiaries of international
recovery and
reconstruction work.
The United States
supports initiatives all
over the world that help
women acquire the skills
necessary to become fully engaged in the political
process. In Africa, for example, the United States has
partnered with nongovernmental organizations to
provide women leadership training. Before the 2002
elections in Senegal, the National Democratic
Institute trained more than 2,000 women in campaign
techniques and skills. The result was impressive: 93
percent of the more than 1,500 women elected to local
government positions in the elections had participated
in this comprehensive training.
The ALVA Consortium, a nongovernmental
organization based in Washington, D.C., is training
many women in Africa in political skills and how to
run for office. With $400,000 from the State
Department’s Human Rights and Democracy Fund,
this group’s program is reaching women in Kenya,
Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola. In both Kenya and
Rwanda, several women who received ALVA
Consortium training have been elected to public office
or appointed to high-level government positions.
In Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, and the self-declared
Republic of Somaliland, the International Republican
Institute is using a U.S. grant of $897,000 to partner
with Muslim civic groups to increase Muslim
women’s participation in politics and civil society and
to increase men’s support for and cooperation with
women’s activism. This project addresses what
Sauerbrey has called one of the greatest impediments
to women’s empowerment—the cultural barrier of differing
expectations for women and men.
Sauerbrey, who led a team of trainers in Cote
d’Ivoire in August 2004
that included Josie Bass,
president of ALVA
Consortium, and Odette
Nyiramilimo, a Rwandan
senator and founder of
the Coalition of Rwandan
Women Leaders, has seen
firsthand the impact of
U.S training initiatives.
“The workshops in Cote
d’Ivoire,” Sauerbrey explained,
have “inspired a
number of women to run
for political office. We
watched them develop the
skills and confidence to do it.”
The State Department and USAID have also
provided funding to nongovernmental organizations in
Eastern Europe and Eurasia to conduct women’s
leadership programs. Prior to the 2000 elections in
Serbia, for example, the National Democratic
Institute used U.S. funding to provide training,
polling, and strategic consultations to attract women
voters. In Russia, the International Republican
Institute is coordinating a women’s parliamentary
program that offers training in parliamentary procedures,
how to draft legislation, and how to run a communication
program. The U.S. Embassy in Belarus
works with women’s organizations to promote democracy
and political activism.
In Kazakhstan, the State Department is funding
a $400,000 project to increase the participation of
provincial women in the electoral process, public policy
formation, and the oversight of local legislative bodies.
In Tajikistan, NDI is managing a $500,000 project
to develop a women’s political network to train
women candidates and increase women’s participation
in the country’s political development.
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