Women-led empowerment: Catalyzing actions and responsibilities for equality (WE-CARE)

The WE-CARE project focuses on scaling a tested, gender-transformative holistic innovation – the Belle Colline – that empowers women and girls, eradicates gender-based violence, catalyzes equitable economic opportunities for rural communities, and reduces and redistributes care burdens among men and women. It combines such interventions as village savings-and-loans groups, women’s empowerment and men’s engagement.

This project, which is being implemented in Burundi, aims to redistribute and reduce unpaid care work for a total of 4,000 women and girls across three villages in the province of Bubanza and five villages in the province of Gitega; develop a network of local women’s rights and community organizations equipped to mobilize on issues of care and community development; and foster an enabling policy environment for the reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work and advancing gender equality.

This project is supported under the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa partnership co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and IDRC. Scaling Care Innovations is a five-year initiative aimed at scaling tested and locally grounded policy and program innovations to redress gender inequalities in unpaid care work in sub-Saharan Africa.