Empower Women and Save the Planet

At the core of WEA’s work is our conviction that to truly and holistically address the issues women face and the issues our environment faces, we must work from an intersectional foundation. This is why we develop trainings for women in environmentally threatened regions around the world to regenerate water, food, and clean energy for their communities. Our trainings equip these women with technical, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills (in topics such as solar cooking, water protection, sustainable farming, clean cookstoves, seed saving and more), so they can protect their environment, generate income, and improve communities from the inside out.

This article featured in the Huffington Post speaks to this intersection.

…[M]utually-aligned advocacy exposes a vital truth that many in both movements have long known: empowering women is crucial to a range of environmental concerns, including climate change. After all, women are the workers, agricultural laborers, and farmers who toil under the weight of current environmental policies… and they are the ones most immediately affected by both quick-acting and slow-acting environmental disasters…

The grand solution is to empower women—it is our moral and political right. It also has the benefit of “saving the planet.” We should be able to act collectively upon the alignment of these two related deeply related issues. Environmentalist should address gender inequality; women’s rights advocates should incorporate environmental concerns. We need to work collaboratively across these issues not just because it makes sense strategically, but because these causes are related at the deepest levels.

Read the entire article here.