Model and Strategy
Rise Up improves health, economic opportunity, and education for women and girls by partnering with visionary local leaders to transform systems, laws, policies, and social norms in the US and around the world. Rise Up builds power with women, girls, and gender nonconforming people to advance gender equity through an externally validated model comprising:
- Leadership and Advocacy Training: Partnering with local leaders to strengthen their skills in the areas of advocacy, policy change, social mobilization, leadership, strategic planning, communications and messaging, and proposal development. Training includes a six-day intensive Accelerator based on an award-winning curriculum, and a three-day convening focused on core issues that alumni identify for their continued learning, growth, and effectiveness.
- Funding and Technical Assistance: Providing grants to local leaders and organizations to launch their own strategies to improve women’s health, expand economic opportunities, and advance gender equity. Rise Up also provides coaching on key leadership and management capacities including fundraising, financial reporting, monitoring and evaluation, and other growth areas that leaders need to advance and sustain their work and impacts.
- Networking: Facilitating opportunities for leaders to establish connections with peers, funders, decisionmakers, and allies from around the world— relationships that are essential for leaders’ long-term resilience, continued learning, and for building pathways toward larger-scale impacts.
- Field Building: Sharing learnings with partners, funders, and decisionmakers and strengthening the gender equity movement’s effectiveness and sustainability. Current field building priorities focus on building the evidence base, investing in a global alumni network platform, and amplifying the voices and power of women and girls.
In 2022, Rise Up launched an external evaluations Rise Up anticipates that these leaders’ advocacy strategies will improve health, economic opportunities, and education for 200 million women and girls.
Impact
Since 2009, Rise Up’s powerful network of 800 leaders has successfully advocated for over 185 new and improved laws and policies, positively impacting more than 160 million people around the world.
Rise Up’s model impacts millions of women and girls by enabling frontline local leaders to advocate for improved laws and policies that tackle the legal, cultural, and structural obstacles preventing women and girls from reaching their full potential. These laws and policies directly improve women’s health and wealth by preventing and addressing gender-based violence; increasing access to sexual and reproductive health care services; preventing workplace harassment; increasing income generation and job training opportunities; ensuring land and property rights; securing access to legal benefits, employment, and leadership training; and building women’s leadership and political representation. A few recent examples of transformational change that Rise Up Leaders have achieved are:
- Ensured economic opportunities and dignified working conditions for more than 1.2 million women workers in South Africa through advocacy for a comprehensive workplace protections strategy.
- Expanded health care and services for 500,000 young women in India by integrating sexual and reproductive health services and information in community health clinics.
- Protected 4.5 million women in Nigeria through advocacy for landmark legislation that prevents gender-based violence and responds to the needs of survivors.
An external evaluation of Rise Up’s work between 2017-2022 revealed that 90% of Leaders said that Rise Up helped them develop essential advocacy and leadership skills, 87% see Rise Up’s support as crucial to enabling them to work at their full capacity, and 80%+ of Leaders surveyed said that Rise Up helped them grow as a professional, increased their confidence in advocating for change, and strengthened their sense of agency.
Leadership
-
Denise Dunning, PhD
Founder and Executive Director
-
Josie Ramos, MA
Founder and Director of Programs and Learning
-
Edith Mebiama, MBA
Director of Operations and Finance
-
Claudia Romeu, MPH
Associate Director of Programs