Community-based and women-led initiatives have great potential to address global crises from local perspectives in ways that promote women’s rights.
But too often, the full potential of such initiatives isn’t realized. While they deliver benefits to the individual communities they serve, these initiatives rarely amass the collective power needed to induce broad social change.
MADRE provides training, tools, knowledge, infrastructure and strategic exchange opportunities to build skills and alliances — among our community-based partners and with philanthropists, policymakers, activists and movements.
What We Do to Strengthen Organizations
Training
We provide our partners with training and skills-building to effectively meet the self-identified needs of women and communities facing war, disaster and their aftermath
Accompaniment
We accompany our partners in shared human rights advocacy campaigns that promote women's leadership, that generate policy wins and that implement those successes in local communities
Funding Models
We present effective models for funding grassroots-level social change work to philanthropic communities, and engage in strategic discussion to strengthen our shared approaches as grantmakers
Legal Expertise
We bring legal expertise and policy recommendations to advance community-based women's engagement with policymakers from the local to international levels
Advocacy and Communications
We deepen public discourse and action that promote community-based women's solutions to end gender violence, promote climate justice and build a just peace
Strategic Exchange
We share with peer organizations case studies and lessons learned from our work, and engage in joint campaigns to deepen our impact
"We value that MADRE is collaborative, respects our perspectives and strengthens our work. Few organizations go to the communities to understand the context and generate relationships, like MADRE does. Also, MADRE generates knowledge and learning that can be transferred to other partner organizations."
- Haidy Duque, Taller de Vida, Colombia
Who We Work With
Each of us plays an essential role in growing strong, progressive movements. MADRE focuses on these key constituencies — our learning allies — to strengthen their capacities, to achieve our strategic goals and to advance gender justice.
Our Community-Based Partners
We strengthen individuals and organizations through trainings in human rights, program management, organizational sustainability, and monitoring and evaluation, as well as through our transnational activist convenings and learning exchanges.
Our Supporters
We communicate regularly with our membership base of donors and activist supporters, to provide them with opportunities to take action and materials to deepen their understanding of global gender justice issues.
Philanthropists and Funders
We engage with the funding community to offer case studies and lessons from our model of work, rooted in a belief that we are peers and partners in shared solidarity movements, rather than donors and beneficiaries.
Peer Organizations
We collaborate with peer organizations to boost our collective capacity to generate impact. We offer lessons from our work for replication and learning, and seek to build on the work of our allies.
Policymakers
We provide expertise and concrete recommendations for policymakers, which deepens their understanding of our priority issues and strengthens their capacities to leverage change.
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Our partners are more active, influential and engaged in social movements and have embedded movement gains at the community level.
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Our partners are sought out as legitimate experts, recognized and respected by local, national and international decision-makers, including traditional leaders, multilateral and government institutions, judicial institutions, academic institutions and the media, among others.
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Our public education strategies enable people to transform their values into coherent positions on human rights and create new entry points to progressive activism.
Learn More about How We Work
