Today is International Rural Women's Day!

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ProLiteracy recognizes this day as an occasion to celebrate the advances rural women are making around the world. Rural women face many obstacles including access to education, human rights and domestic violence abuses, and minimal involvement in community decision or democratic participation. We celebrate this day and stand alongside rural women as they make changes in their communities and organize together to have a unified voice and bring awareness about the issues they face.

ProLiteracy supports several programs around the world committed to helping rural women gain literacy skills. Those partner programs include:

Asociación de Mujeres de Juntas Parroquiales Rurales del Ecuador (AMJUPRE)

AMJUPRE is a grassroots nonprofit organization that has been working to promote the rights of indigenous women in Ecuador since 2003. Indigenous women living in rural areas are often the most marginalized within their communities and have limited access to jobs, education, or leadership roles. AMJUPRE provides training and capacity building for local political councils, and focuses on empowering rural women by bringing them together to organize anti-violence campaigns and advocate for the changes they want to see in their lives and communities. AMJUPRE currently has 450 member programs within Ecuador and has helped create a Latin American network to allow indigenous rural women to seek solidarity with other women around the world in the fight against exploitation and social injustice.

Non-Timber Forest Products (NFTP) 

NTFP is a local nongovernmental organization based in the Ratanakiri Province of northeast Cambodia. 
Established in 1996, NTFP plays a critical role in helping rural women gain access to literacy skills and help their communities secure rights to their land and natural resources. Cambodia’s unofficial caste system means that being from an ethnic group with no written language is synonymous to being 'uncivilized.' The NFTP literacy program is enabling Kavet women and girls to gain literacy skills in their native languages and hold their heads high.
This year ProLiteracy is supporting a literacy program for 240 Kavet women in six villages. The majority of the women are between the ages of 10 to 25 and this is their first opportunity to have an education as most have no access to primary school. This project makes a significant difference for the future of rural women in the Kavet communities of Cambodia. Through this project woman participants will be part of a pool of literate people in each village. For many of the women, they are learning to read and write their own language and the national language (Khmer) for the first time in the history of their peoples.

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