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USAID Press Release 
Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Today, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator (USAID) Mark Green and Ivanka Trump, Advisor to the President, announced 14 new projects with more than 200 public- and private-sector partners across 22 countries to support the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative. These partnerships, which include representatives from bilateral and multilateral donors, non-government organizations, universities, foreign governments, and the private sector, will enable W-GDP to reach more than 100,000 women over the coming years in support of its three pillars: women prospering in the workforce, women succeeding as entrepreneurs, and women enabled in the economy. The announcement took place in front of hundreds of partners and award recipients in an event co-hosted with the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

Administrator Green noted “we know that investing in women builds countries that are resilient and self-reliant. The Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative will accelerate the achievement of these goals by leveraging the collective resources and expertise of the U.S. Government to unlock the full economic potential of women around the world.” Advisor Trump said “we are thrilled by the enthusiastic response since the launch of W-GDP. Through our three core pillars of women prospering in the workforce, succeeding as entrepreneurs, and advancing economic equality under the law, we are committed to delivering real results that create transformational change for women in developing countries.”

USAID manages the central W-GDP fund, established through National Security Presidential Memorandum-16, and has set aside $27 million for an Incentive Fund for the following projects:

• A Micro-Journey to Self-Reliance: Economic Reintegration for Victims of Gender-Based Violence: Reintegrate at least 170 women victims of gender-based violence into the economy through increased employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.
• Brazil, Chile, Colombia, México, and Perú. Women Prospering in Technology: Work with information and communications technology companies to equip 8,700 women with the skills needed for placement and promotion in tech sector jobs.
• Côte D’Ivoire. Pro-Jeunes Vocational Training for Women in Energy:Provide vocational training and support to 750 postsecondary young women in solar-energy sales, installation, and service as entrepreneurs and employees for solar-powered micro-grids.
• Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia. Property Rights for Women’s Economic Empowerment: Ensure women’s property rights through revising laws and regulations to improve the ability of millions of women to own, inherit, or use land across Africa.
• Supporting Entrepreneurial Skills (YES-Georgia): Provide focused technical assistance for 2,500 women entrepreneurs and employees to increase their earnings and facilitate access to finance for women entrepreneurs.
• USAID Global Development Alliance with Alaffia Alliance: Establish new processing operations in Ghana to create employment opportunities for 9,500 women in Ghana and link them with markets in the United States.
• Producer-Owned Women’s Enterprises: Create 28 women-owned enterprises in the creative manufacturing sector that will connect 6,800 women producers to commercial supply chains in natural and biodegradable products.
• Jadi Pendusaha Mandiri (JAPRI) – Becoming an Independent Entrepreneur: Create 2,000 registered women-owned enterprises and support growth in income and revenue for 5,000 women in poultry supply chains.
• Papua New Guinea. Women’s Economic Empowerment: Support the growth of 40 women-led enterprises while reforming discriminatory laws and business practices that affect 50,000 women in Papua New Guinea.
• The Philippines. The Journey to Self-Reliance through Women’s Economic Empowerment: Work with the private sector to increase earnings for 3,800 women entrepreneurs and 12,000 households, and assist local governments to address barriers that prevent women’s full economic participation.
• Women in Rwandan Energy (WIRE): Enable 1,400 women to break into the fast-growing energy sector, while working with the Rwandan Government and the private sector to bring even more women into this traditionally male- dominated field.
• Sénégal.Women’s Entrepreneurship Promotion and Business Investment Activity: Work with Peace Corps and the private sector to create 1,500 new jobs for women in agribusiness and equip 20,000 women with the necessary skills to increase their earnings.
• South Africa. Women Enabling Women: Create an eco-system of women’s economic empowerment by establishing 1,000 women-owned child-care centers, which will create jobs for thousands more women while reducing the burden of unpaid care for women in the workplace.
• West Africa.Women’s Economic Empowerment in the West Africa Trade and Investment Hub (WATIH): Ensure women-owned and managed Ghanaian agribusinesses will have greater access to markets for trade and investment.

The awarded projects will open doors to employment and entrepreneurship, and provide access to finance and tailored assistance for women in business. Moreover, the projects were carefully designed to target constraints found in laws, employer practices, and restrictive norms to improve the enabling environment for women employees, business-owners, and entrepreneurs for decades to come. The awarded projects were selected based on an interagency review process that included over 50 different points of contact who reviewed, rated, and ranked each proposal that was submitted. USAID looks forward to working with Congress in a bipartisan manner on these important initiatives.

Additional Resources

The first whole-of-government approach to global women’s economic empowerment [download file]

“Investing in women is vital for our collective economic prosperity and global stability. When we empower women, communities prosper and countries thrive.”

IVANKA TRUMP, ADVISOR OF THE PRESIDENT

The following is an excerpt from an article posted on Thomson Reuters Foundation PLACE. Follow the link below for the full article. 

By Anastasia Moloney

OVEJAS, Colombia, June 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Forced to flee her home to escape violence during Colombia’s half-century civil war, farmer Diana Vitola has been waiting decades to receive a formal document proving she is the lawful owner of a small plot of land.

Living in the former war-torn municipality of Ovejas in northern Colombia, Vitola belongs to a farming community set to receive nearly 3,000 land and property titles, making this the first area where most land is formalized.

“We’ve been waiting years for this,” said 45-year-old Vitola, who grows maize and cassava.

“As a woman, it’s really exciting. Before women were marginalized. Now we can appear somewhere on a document. We feel important, that we have rights.”

“For the past 18 months, government officials have been visiting farms and thatched adobe homes in Ovejas on foot measuring, surveying and identifying plots of land.

Farmers now have the chance to register their property with the national land registry and receive formal titles for free.

CORNERSTONE OF PEACE

Granting land titles is part of government efforts to promote rural development as set out in the 2016 peace deal signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.

Unequal land distribution was a key reason why the FARC took up arms in 1964 as a Marxist-inspired agrarian movement that fought to defend the rights of landless peasants.

The peace accord pledges to address unequal land ownership and foster development in neglected rural areas hit hard by violence.

The government aims to formalize 7 million hectares of land, of which so far nearly a quarter have been titled, according to the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“The land reform package is part of the attempt by the state to deliver to small farmers what has historically been denied to them, which is access to land and a dignified existence in the countryside,” said David Huey, Kroc Institute representative in Colombia.

Formal land titles will also help farmers to get access to government programs and credit, he said.

For villager Albeiro Rivera, who was also displaced by Colombia’s conflict, getting a property title to the home he grew up in and informally inherited from his father brings financial and legal security and allows him to get a bank loan.

“During the conflict, getting a land title wasn’t a priority. The priority then was to survive,” said 37-year-old Rivera.

“Having the property title means it is ours, it belongs to me and my wife. It’s a huge step. It’s now worth more and nobody can take it away from me. It would’ve been too expensive to have registered the property myself,” Rivera said.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is partly funding the pilot project in Ovejas, said it hopes to roll out similar initiatives over the next couple of months in other regions.

“The problem here is the lack of clarity about what land belongs to whom,” said Larry Sacks, USAID’s mission director in Colombia.

“Without the clear land rights it’s considerably more difficult to create the conditions that you need to transform rural areas to help licit markets flourish, to trigger private investment and spark economic growth,” he added.

FEW LAND TITLES

With property titles, the villagers of Ovejas are rather the exception than the rule.

Across rural Colombia, six out of 10 plots of land do not have a formal title or are not registered, according to USAID.

Granting land titles in Ovejas is relatively easy because no one disputes ownership of the plots.

Yet sorting out tenure is far harder in other parts of Colombia where land was seized by paramilitary forces, rebel groups or drug traffickers, with farmers often pressured by armed groups to sell out at cut-rate prices.

Attempts to restore landownership started during the previous government of Juan Manuel Santos, which launched a program in 2011 to return millions of hectares of stolen or abandoned land to their rightful owners.

The government then estimated 6.5 to 10 million hectares of land – up to 15% of Colombian territory – had been abandoned or illegally acquired.

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

A municipal land office in Ovejas is giving local government a role to play in land administration.

For 72-year-old Glenys Mariela Salazar, retirement has not made life easy. A victim of Colombia’s armed conflict, her main occupation for the last 20 years has been survival. In 2001, paramilitary gangs and a bloody massacre drove her and her family from their home in Salitral, a small village in the Montes de María region of northern Colombia. She left with 10 children between the ages 3 and 16. She and her husband abandoned their business, a billiard table in the village’s main plaza, forever.

Like thousands others from the region, they ended up in the town of Ovejas, Sucre, occupying rickety huts built on the edge of the village. For several years, she and her husband went back and forth to their property in Salitral, just 30 kilometers away, trying to maintain a connection to their land and salvage what they could. When the Colombian military chased them away in 2003, they stopped returning.

They filed a claim with the country’s Land Restitution Unit but heard nothing. In 2008, an international housing subsidy reached Ovejas. The municipality granted them land, and their neighborhood of two dozen displaced families began to construct sturdy homes on the edge of the town. They were connected to the electric grid in 2011. However, they lacked regular water and had no connections for natural gas.

The Path to Ownership

Large swaths of urban centers across Colombia are populated by victims like the Salazars, families displaced from their lands and forced to live in cities. So when in 2017, the mayor of Ovejas handed Gladys a land title for her little house in Ovejas, she and her family rejoiced. This type of government support was unprecedented. Typically, local leaders spend public funds on roads, city park improvements, aqueducts, or other publicly tangible infrastructure that will convince residents the government is spending money for their benefit. Such investments tend to generate votes during election season.

By Land and Rural Development Program in Colombia

Maritza Losada moved to Puerto Guadalupe, Meta five years ago when her husband found a job with a large biomass energy company that grows sugar cane. She and her husband purchased a lot in the town’s poorest neighborhood, Barrio Nuevo. The district remains today much like it was in 1995 when the government created the housing project for future agro-laborers: no roads, no sewage, no gutters.

The town sits on banks of the Meta River, which flows into the Orinoco River, and allows farmers and agro-industrialists to transport their goods over hundreds of miles across the eastern plains of Colombia. Nevertheless, this river and the rainy season turn Maritza’s neighborhood into a muddy bog. Every year, the neighbors lay down stones and boards to build walkways to maneuver about their homes.

Over time, they have erected makeshift electric posts and wires to gain access to light and electricity. Maritza’s house too has slowly evolved, from a canvassed shack to a more durable, yet uninsulated, structure with a zinc roof and walls. Inside, there are no dividing walls or rooms; in one corner sleeps her two children, in the other she and her husband. She is currently expecting her fourth child.

With a reliable income and work benefits, under the law, her husband could access money deposited in his retirement pension for certain objectives, including for home improvements. There is only one problem the couple never processed the paperwork for a registered land title for their property. With no registered property title, Maritza and her family cannot access this nor any other government subsidy.