Grantee Partner News

EMpower is excited to release EMpower’s report ‘‘A Window of Opportunity: Programming With and For Very Young Adolescent Girls” in Spanish! To mark the occasion, EMpower hosted a webinar featuring longtime grantee partner Tiempo de Juego. Founded in 2006, Tiempo de Juego works to empower young people in Bogota, Colombia through health education and life skills training.

Imagine not being able to take a morning run, not being able to wear your favourite shirt, not being able to go to the post office. Imagine not being able to live freely and always feel confined because your body and its politics are those of others. Now imagine being a woman in South Africa. For centuries women in this country have fought for their seat at the table of basic human decency. By protesting and standing up for each other, for themselves but especially for the next generation who must endure the harsh realities of a patriarchal world. Since the Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 it became extremely evident that women and girls are safe nowhere, especially in their households as numbers of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) have drastically increased.

The onset of COVID-19 has further exacerbated the gap between those who need mental healthcare services and those who are able to provide them. EMpower partners work in communities that are on the margins and field staff have been the first line of support for people experiencing and dealing with extreme vulnerabilities. A few months into the pandemic, field staff at EMpower partner organizations in India started reporting increased stress levels, as they facilitated continuous on-the-ground relief support in communities. EMpower identified an urgent need to invest in resiliency building within organizations. Under the aegis of EMpower’s Building Bridges learning exchange series, The Compassionate Counselling Program began as the first concrete step in this direction, aimed specifically at equipping field staff in organizations with relevant counselling skills to reach communities with mindfulness and compassion.