Overview
MADRE has partners and projects in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia, Kenya, Palestine, Syria and Iraq. They describe their work in four parts, Ending Gender Violence, Advancing Climate Justice, Building a Just Peace and Campaign: No Borders on Gender Justice. All these projects are centered on improving global issues through work in specific highly effected communities. In all these projects MADRE works to empower and support women, rather than simply to “fix” these communities.

In their Ending Gender Violence campaign, MADRE sets its sights on the importance of access to human rights for women, girls and LGBTIQ people. Their work in this campaign revolves around healing from gender based violence, preventing this violence, and affirming that gender violence doesn’t have to be the norm.

In their Advancing Climate Justice project, MADRE recognizes that, while climate change is a global issue, poor, rural and Indigenous women are the hardest hit by it. While prioritizing these women, MADRE does not see them as victims, instead describing them as “sources of solutions, inventing innovative, locally-rooted responses that offer a blueprint for effective, global action”.

MADRE’s Building a Just Peace project emphasizes the crucial role of women as peacekeepers in their communities. They cite research that shows “that women’s meaningful participation in peace negotiations results in agreements 35% more likely to last at least 15 years”. With this in mind, MADRE uses capacity building methods among others to empower women to mobilize humanitarian aid, health care and shelter, and to heal their communities.

Finally, MADRE’s current campaign, No Borders on Gender Justice, focuses on the oppressive nature of the global right wing and seeks to use this “moment of political crisis” as an opportunity to contribute to movements for justice. This project focuses on Trump Administration policies as well as other right wing forces. It is in this project that MADRE seeks to make connections between United States justice movements and movements and partners in the Global South. Their methods, as detailed below, include campaigns, advocacy, grant making and education. Their aims, in a sentence, are to improve the visibility, voice and power of “women and girls, refugees, migrants, Muslims, and LGBTIQ individuals and communities, as well as racial justice activists targeted for state repression”.

Methods
MADRE works through three primary channels, which are grant making, capacity building, and legal advocacy.

MADRE funds community-based women’s orgs for both short term and long term goals. This includes communities that war or natural disaster have made difficult to fund. MADRE describes the tenets of its work in grant making as direct service, convening and movement building, crisis response for human rights defenders, skills and leadership development, and advocacy and policy change. They describe how they know if their work is making a positive difference as, if their partners are better able to meet their self-identified needs of women and girls in their communities, if their partners gain the resilience to withstand “shocks” and to adapt effectively to challenges, and if their partners have the financial resources to “consciously develop more feminist, rights based activities and programs to create long-term change in their communities”.

When it comes to capacity building, MADRE supports community-based, women led initiatives that promote women’s rights. However, they emphasize that due to disenfranchisement and other issues, these initiatives are often unrealized. Their goal is to improve the collective power of these organizations in order to catalyze broader social change. MADRE describes its methods of capacity building as training, accompaniment, funding models, legal expertise, advocacy and communications, and strategic exchange. They will know their work is effect when their partners are “more active, influential and engages in social movements”, and sought out as experts and recognized and respected by decision-makers. They also emphasize a desire for their public education strategies to enable people to adopt positions on human rights, creating new entry points to progressive activism.

In its legal advocacy, MADRE attempts to bring community leading women into the policymaking arena, in order to bring their perspective of local issues to international lawmaking. MADRE posits that these women’s “unique expertise allows them to best identify, meet the needs of and advocate for the women and communities they serve”. MADRE states that they will know their work is effective when their partners have access to policy spaces where they can speak for themselves, their partners are equipped to implement progress made in the international human rights context at the national and local level, and when both both MADRE and their partners have contributed to laws and policies that “uphold [their] vision of human rights”.
Partners

Colombia: Taller de Vida

Guatemala: MUIXIL

Iraq: Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

Kenya: Indigenous Information Network

Nicaragua: Wangki Tangni

Palestine: Midwives for Peace