Aga Khan Foundation Program

Our work with the Aga Khan Foundation Canada partners (2009) in Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Uganda has included strengthening understanding and action approaches to gender equality. The main objective of this partnership is to catalyze and assist in facilitating a change process in eight small community development organizations, to deepen their own capacity for improving gender relationships and power inequalities, both within their organization and their programmatic work. Most of the organizational partners carry out community-oriented programs with small staff complements and small budgets. For many of the individual participants, this is one of the few individual and organizational processes in which they have participated.

All the organization's projects are focused on raising awareness and consciousness at the individual level. To some extent, each project is also attempting to shift the underlying beliefs and values within the culture that are disadvantaging girls and women, yet there is an acknowledgement that underlying religious and cultural beliefs are strong forces with which to contend. For example, one organization is promoting girl-child education by facilitating community and school forums on issues affecting girls school attendance, while providing hands-on gender-sensitivity training for teachers and parents.

To see a list of our participating partners, click here.