In 2008, ExxonMobil launched a $1.5 million project with Vital Voices to empower women in Africa to become leaders and advocates.
Although the education of women and girls is closely tied to good health and women’s economic empowerment, women and girls in many countries do not get the educational support they need and deserve. To help reduce barriers that prevent girls from being educated and to equip women to become leaders in their community, ExxonMobil launched their Educating Women and Girls Initiative in 2005. Extensive research confirms that programs directed at educating women and girls can have a multiplier effect for local communities, leading to better health conditions, reducing poverty, and slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
In 2007, the ExxonMobil Foundation made grants totaling more than $6 million, bringing ExxonMobil’s cumulative investment to more than $11 million in Africa and other developing countries. They funded projects in areas including infrastructure, safety, and sanitation improvements of primary and secondary schools; teacher training; vocational and non-formal education, including courses on life skills, health, and civic responsibility; leadership and management training; and business development and micro-enterprise. For example:
Save the Children and Africare, together with the Angolan Ministry of Education, are addressing the education and health needs of women and children in Kibala, in the Kwanza Sul province of Angola. Building on enthusiastic community support for the first six schools, the ExxonMobil Foundation funded the construction of four more schools and three community health posts. More than 300 students will benefit from each of the 10 new schools, including hundreds of girls who would otherwise not have had access to safe education. The community health posts will benefit more than 6600 people in the region, supplying vaccines and essential medicines. Together with the Angolan Ministry of Health, 60 teachers, 500 health professionals, and dozens of community health volunteers are being trained in basic hygiene, nutrition, and the causes of and treatments for malaria and other common childhood diseases;
In Kazakhstan, the Astana Enterprise Development Center — established by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2006 — has provided business training to more than 4200 entrepreneurs, of whom more than 75 percent were women, and technical assistance to 131 small-medium enterprises, of which 51 were woman-owned or -managed; and,
In 2007, ExxonMobil Foundation support enabled 52 female mid-level women managers of NGOs from more than 23 developing countries to participate in leadership and management development workshops through the Centre for Development and Population Activities’ (CEDPA) Global Women in Management Program (GWIM). They also expanded CEDPA’s Alumni Coaching Program — launched in 2005 with a grant from the ExxonMobil Foundation — by supporting a coaching workshop for 25 women leaders from around the world. The GWIM workshops are designed to strengthen program and financial management as well as communication, fundraising, and leadership skills of women managers working in community organizations in developing countries. To ensure continued professional growth and application of new skills after training, each GWIM graduate is paired with an alumni coach for a one-year professional coaching relationship. Graduates also join a network of more than 5200 CEDPA alumni who are working to improve communities worldwide. In 2008, CEDPA will conduct the program in Nigeria for women across Africa in addition to the United States and a Spanish language program in Mexico. In 2009, CEDPA will expand the program to the Middle East and Latin America.
The ExxonMobil Foundation focuses funding efforts through their Educating Women and Girls Initiative on local NGOs, consistent with their commitment to build the capacity of host countries to effectively partner with multinational companies such as ExxonMobil. For example, an NGO in Indonesia is drawing on the training model of the Global Women in Management Program to enhance the skills of community leaders. In Angola, two local NGOs are benefiting from direct funding to develop the necessary capacity to become more effective partners for implementing our Educating Women and Girls Initiative.