Funding Decisions

Project Title: Eradicating Child Marriage in Sierra Leone

Testing country: Sierra Leone

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $217,932

CAUSE Canada will test an innovative approach to eradicate child marriage by educating men seeking child brides about the negative consequences of child marriage for them, their families and entire communities. The solution being tested includes training community leaders, empowering advocates, organizing community events against child marriage and collecting data on the number of prevented marriages vs. marriages that took place despite the intervention.

Project Title: Farmer-led Tools, Dashboard Development and the Future of Farming

Testing Country: India & Kenya

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $236,000

Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University will test tools with women farmers to identify capacity building needs, such as accessing new technologies, credit, infrastructure, markets, financial and business planning/management etc. It will also test a farmer-led indicator dashboard and explore the opportunities and impacts of big data and future of farming at the smallholder farmer level in the Nyando Valley (Kenya) and in two districts of Gujarat State in India.

Project Title: Promoting Community-Based Tabletop Simulation Development

Testing Country: Jordan

Testing period: 12 months

Amount: $158,828

Lessons Learned Simulations and Training will be testing workshops which train local humanitarian workers in Amman, Jordan in participatory, gender-aware simulation design. To test the effectiveness of these workshops, they will be followed by a period of coaching and mentoring through the independent design of programmatically relevant simulations. Finally, the implementing team will support local organizations in the delivery of training simulations to their teams or beneficiaries.

Project Title: Women’s Empowerment, Agricultural Innovation, and Climate Change Adaptation

Testing Country: Indonesia

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $250,000

Lestari Sustainable Development Consultants will test the women-focused dissemination of newly developed drought-tolerant coffee varieties that will increase climatic resilience. The dissemination will use a gender responsive climate smart coffee farming methodology. The expected impacts of the proposed solution are improved gender equality, increased coffee productivity, more income and food security, and strengthened coffee climatic resilience. The testing will be conducted in the Indonesian coffee producing centres of Toraja and Enrekang districts, South Sulawesi Province.

Project Title: It Takes a Village to Heal

Testing Country: Democratic Republic of Congo

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $224,660

Make Music Matter, in partnership with the Panzi Hospital and Foundation will be testing the expansion of their innovative ‘Healing in Harmony’ music therapy program, which historically focused on helping women and girls survivors of sexual violence recover from their traumas and reintegrate back into the community. This project will now test the inclusion of men and boys within the existing program in order to provide the opportunity to address the trauma from violence and conflict that is pervasive in their lives, and develop nonviolent coping skills, discuss positive models of masculinity, understand gender equality, and learn tools to support and empower their family and community members.

Project Title: Learning Community and Incubator for Gender Equality Projects in Nicaragua

Testing Country: Nicaragua

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $248,975

Mer et Monde will test the development of a local learning community and an incubator for gender equality projects in the department of Carazo in Nicaragua. Capacity building activities coupled with opportunities for practical application in micro-projects will facilitate the transition from theory to practice for the participants. The innovative aspect lies particularly in the methodology chosen (experiential learning) and the collaborative work between six organizations in the Carazo region, for whom this will be a first opportunity to come together to learn, build and experiment under the theme of gender equality.

Project Title: Writing a Path out of Poverty: Testing a Cash Calculator with Extremely Poor Women in Northern Kenya

Country: Kenya

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $189,765

My Oral Village will conduct a field-test in Kenya of ‘4-Share,’ a cash calculator for Android smartphones and tablets. 4-Share translates cash into place value notation, and provides record-keeping templates with no text, only numbers and easily drawn and recalled images to represent statement line items. The goal is to create a safe, motivating solution that allows innumerate women to acquire basic ‘financial numeracy’ and keep their own business records without the help of others.

Project Title: Meshkat Community: Shining a Light on Gender Equality in Jordan

Testing Country: Jordan

Testing period: 12 months

Amount: $222,617

PeaceGeeks will test a new method of peace building in Jordan that centres around women and girls, to develop effective, inspiring and empathic narratives to catalyze a new conversation around norms that limit women’s economic potential and agency in society. The core concept focuses on Jordanian women identifying and creating content but also includes engaging men and boys, who will be trained to see if they can better engage their male peers to rethink narratives that are limiting gender equality.

Project Title: Women’s Empowerment via Menstrual Hygiene and Livelihood Integration

Testing Country: Uganda

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $250,000

Women’s Global Health Innovations, in partnership with Village Health Teams (VHTs) will test an innovative menstrual health solution where VHTs from 5 Villages will be trained to promote and earn income selling Bfree menstrual Cups. As opposed to traditional menstrual health products, the Bfree Cup is physically antibacterial, comfortable, easy to clean and reusable for up to 10 years. The core idea to test is whether VHTs can own and drive a solution that improves gender-related outcomes.

Project Title: A platform against violence on women journalists in Sudan

Testing country: Sudan

Testing period: 12 months

Amount: $246,710

Alternatives will develop and test a new digital database designed to improve the safety of women journalists and protect women’s rights in Sudan. By collecting secure data on violence and harassment experienced by women journalists, the online tool will help organizations and the international community better understand gender-based violence in the region and improve prevention and response methods.

Project Title: Girls Groundswell

Testing Country: Guatemala

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $198,574

Canada SOS will test an innovative approach to improving educational performance and retention among rural Mayan youth, especially girls, in Guatemala, using student-driven “learning circles” supported by e-learning technologies. “Learning circles” will be led by trained Indigenous youth (aged 13-21) who will mentor students in grades 4-6 to encourage academic reinforcement and improved educational outcomes.

Project Title: Midwifery Active Digitization Empowerment Initiative for Tanzania

Testing Country: Tanzania

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $250,000

CNIS will test the use of digital augmentation to improve and expand the delivery of midwifery curriculum at Tanzania’s Nursing Training Colleges. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of digital learning as a cost-effective alternative to standard classroom training, with the goal of increasing availability of quality care for women at risk of maternal and neonatal mortality in low- and middle-income countries.

Project Title: Remote Ultrasound capacity building for Antenatal Access

Testing Country: Ethiopia

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $250,000

In partnership with the University of Saskatchewan, Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR) will design and test a capacity building program that will increase access to  obstetrical care in rural Ethiopia by bringing potentially life-saving prenatal ultrasound imaging – and associated diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic capacities-to pregnant women in remote areas of Ethiopia. The goal is to test the delivery of synchronous ultrasound services in selected Health Centers for pregnant women, who are unable to access regular obstetrical antenatal care (ANC) by training health officers, nurses and/or midwives to use synchronous ultrasound technology in consultation with an Obstetrician located in a regional hospital.

Project Title: Technology & Training for Quality and Equality

Testing Country: Nicaragua

Testing period: 14 months

Amount: $250,000

Change for Children will test a new training program and digital resource database for teachers in remote indigenous communities of Nicaragua. The offline, technology-enabled, linguistically and culturally-appropriate MOOC (massive open online course) will be tested to determine its impact on teacher capacity, classroom resources, quality of instruction and gender equality.

Project Title: Inclusive E-Learning for Ugandan Youth

Testing Country: Uganda

Testing period: 12 months

Amount: $213,814

Embrace International Foundation will test a new approach to self-directed e-learning through the use of Mobile Learning Labs, which consist of a portable plug-and-play server RACHEL (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning) and tablets. The project aims to empower and improve the lives of students in rural Uganda, especially girls and those living with disabilities, by promoting skills development and improving enrolment rates.

Project Title: Kieni Fighters Resource Centre for Women and Girls

Country: Kenya

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $214,945

KIDS Initiative will test a new holistic prevention program, the Kieni Fighter Resource Centre for Women and Girls, that addresses behavioural, biomedical, and structural risks of HIV/AIDS infection for women and girls in Kenya. The project, which includes training to promote alternative livelihood opportunities and incentives to increase educational completion rates, is designed to reduce exposure to the root causes of the feminization of HIV/AIDS.

Project Title: Increasing poultry production in Zambia

Testing Country: Zambia

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $249,030

OVO will test the distribution of solar chicken egg incubators with related training as a means to help farmers in Zambia raise more chickens, diversify their incomes and improve their overall livelihoods.

Project Title: Preventing Cervical Cancer in India through Self-sampling (PCCIS)

Testing Country: India

Testing period: 15 months

Amount: $250,000

Ryerson will test the introduction of a self-sampling method, supported by a sexual health literacy intervention, to increase screening for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and cervical cancer among rural women in India. The project aims to facilitate timely screening for HPV and help to decrease cervical cancer mortality rates in areas where the Papanicolaou (Pap) test is not easily accessible to women.