In order to create new awareness and positive action on global issues of concern to women, Women's EDGE and Partners of the Americas implemented the Global Reach Out for Women (GROW) project, a grassroots public education, media, and advocacy program focused on gender, development aid, trade and private investment. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supported this project for the period of July 1999 - June 2002.

Through this project, Partners and EDGE brought together interested women in five midwestern states. Through training and small grants, these women became effective advocates of U.S. foreign policies that address the needs of women globally. Lessons from the project are compiled in the online activist manual Success in Local Organizing: Making a World of Difference.

Examples of Projects

"Wisconsin Women Care"

The Wisconsin project built on the existing efforts of the Wisconsin- Nicaragua Partners of the Americas, targeting a coalition of women and women's organizations. The project is generating awareness of the status of women globally-especially in Nicaragua-and seeks to increase support for international development programs that assist women and girls. Activities to promote this awareness included mailings sent to 455 Wisconsin libraries, the completion of a Wisconsin Women Care website, and the initiation of an education and recruitment program among Wisconsin women.

The main event of the project, a regional mother-daughter workshop, attracted 85 participants from around Wisconsin. The workshop included speakers from local organizations, Washington D.C., and Nicaragua, and focused on the connection between women in Wisconsin and women in Nicaragua and how the former could improve the lives of the latter. The workshop closed with each participant pledging to take action on behalf of women around the world.

The Wisconsin Partners of the Americas Chapter is working on this project with the Association for Home and Community Education, American Association for University Women, Business and Professional Women, League of Women Voters, PEO Sisterhood, Wisconsin Technical Colleges and Zonta International.

Chicago GROW

GROW Chicago invited local organizations to a meeting to educate them about the GROW project and the social and economic issues facing women and girls globally. They also used a focus group to test their media message. This allowed the group to receive feedback on the substance of the message and to ask for assistance in disseminating the message within the greater Chicago area.

This original network of interested women became the basis of the Chicago GROW email campaign. Over the next year, Chicago GROW was able to activate this group of interested citizens around important legislation affecting women and girls around the world. The core group of organizers also wrote letters to the editors and met with other groups working in Chicago who were working on international issues. The group was also successful in meeting with their Congressional representative and contacting her office on a regular basis.

GROW Indiana

GROW Indiana combined a service project and an awareness raising conference to complete their GROW project. The GROW Indiana project was made up nursing professors and decided to use their local university as their base of operations and main audience.

At the original conference in Chicago, the GROW Indiana group heard about the great need for nursing uniforms in Nicaragua. They knew that nurses in the United States no longer wore the traditional white uniform, except as nursing students. They recognized that they would be able to work with their target populations and gather many uniforms that were no longer being used. They gathered hundreds of uniforms and worked with the Partners of the America's chapter in Wisconsin to send these uniforms to nurses in Nicaragua.

The group in Indiana did not stop with just doing a service project. They also wanted to bring an element of political action to their group. They accomplished this by holding events and speeches for a 5-day workshop. They invited speakers from Washington, DC to come and talk about the problems facing women in developing countries. The speakers also worked with the core-group of organizers to encourage participants to not only listen at the speeches but to also take action.