Support women worldwide this International Women’s Day

Above: With your support, we can invest in more life-changing programmes for women like Irene. Once a struggling farm labourer, she has joined a group of women to set up a successful banana farming enterprise supported by Oxfam. Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam

If you are born a girl, you’re more likely to be living in poverty, be worst affected when emergency strikes and have fewer resources, rights and opportunities than men.

That is why our programmes support women to claim their rights and make decisions that affect their lives. We also work with communities to break down the long-held prejudices behind domestic violence, e.g. through the ‘We Can’ campaign in Tanzania which has seen over 350,000 men and women pledge to end domestic violence in their communities.

We also address the lack of education and opportunities with loans, seeds, tools, better farming techniques and business training, helping thousands of women in countries like Rwanda to grow more food, set up businesses and make goods that they can market themselves.

This International Women’s Day (Tuesday, March 8th), join Oxfam in celebrating women everywhere. 

Ending poverty starts with women – because their strength, resilience, tenacity and vision are the key to creating lasting change in their communities. For example, if women were given equal access to agricultural resources they could grow enough extra food to feed more than 100 million of the world’s hungriest people.

Yet every day, women’s efforts to escape poverty are blocked by discrimination and inequality. Women routinely face violence, abuse and unequal treatment at home, at work and in their wider communities.

That’s why we need your help to continue to give girls and women greater opportunities so that they can shape their own futures. By supporting our work worldwide, you will enable us to continue to help women and girls fight discrimination and overcome poverty.

IRENE’S STORY

By helping a woman through Oxfam, you help her immediate family and her community, generation after generation.

Irene Muzukira (42), once a struggling farm labourer in Zambia, has turned her life around. An Oxfam training programme gave her and other members of the Kabwadu Women’s Farming Group a life-changing opportunity to grow their own bananas.

Investment in a hydro-powered pump, solar-powered fencing and training means that their banana plantation is thriving in this hot climate.

The days when Irene and her two children went to sleep hungry are gone and, unlike Irene’s own parents, she can invest in their education. And the project’s success is felt in the wider community; 80 women and their families reap the benefits of this fruitful initiative.

“I feel it’s changing my life,” Irene says. “But I am mindful of others who don’t have what they need. I think change is possible but we need to invest in our children.”

Female heroes like Irene are working tirelessly every day to care for their families and improve their communities.

Please support them to change their world by lifting them out of extreme poverty.