Our History Serving Since 2008

The Women and Girls Initiative began as a pilot program in 2008 to support over 400 disadvantaged adolescent girls and young women in two different post-disaster and conflict contexts: Rwanda after the 1994 genocide and Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. WGI has now shifted to a longer-range strategic plan to strengthen the capacity of adolescent girls and young women worldwide. 

In both Haiti and Rwanda, WGI has already served hundreds of beneficiaries who received scholarships to support their primary and secondary school education since 2009.  In the past four years, about 50 of these students completed secondary school. In Rwanda, few were able to enroll in university due to a lack of financial support or access to government scholarship. In Haiti, in 2016, four beneficiaries began university studies and in 2017 all 10 students successfully passed national exams and now are on the road to fulfilling their personal goals of completing undergraduate studies in medicine, nursing, marketing, engineering and law.