JLMC has been awarded a $20,000 grant.
JLMC’s mission is to empower vulnerable adolescent girls by enabling them
to create healthy, self-sustaining families who prosper without further aid. Since its inception in 2006, JLMC
has successfully delivered healthcare services, education, microenterprise, social justice, leadership, and
empowerment programs to over 200,000 individuals (primarily women and children) in 76 rural communities
in Central Uganda. In 2015, several of JLMC’s programs began graduating into self-sustainability and
independence from further financial assistance. As a result, JLMC made the decision to place its primary
focus on adolescent girls.
In response to the challenges adolescent girls face, and in the fulfillment of our mission, JLMC designed a
replicable curriculum and system of delivery for girls called The Girl Power Project (GPP). The GPP is a
transformational life-skills education program consisting of 60+ hours of workshops, camp, and club
sessions taught over the course of two years to girls aged 10-14 in rural primary schools in Central Uganda.
The GPP aims to empower adolescent girls to stay in school and avoid child marriage, disease, early
pregnancy, and violence by equipping them with critical assets they need to overcome these barriers and
navigate adolescence successfully.
The GPP is delivered by dynamic, highly educated Ugandan leaders who serve as positive role models to girl
participants. The program covers a range of important topics, including but not limited to puberty,
menstruation, HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence (GBV), children’s rights, peer pressure, self-esteem and goal
setting through activities, songs, dances, videos and peer mentor development that fully engage girls to
participate.
JLMC employs Population Council’s Girl Roster toolkit to estimate how many adolescent girls live in the
areas where the GPP is introduced. JLMC aims to reach 50-80% of the adolescent girls in each community
with GPP programming, administering a “social vaccine” to disrupt harmful cultural norms that primarily
affect adolescent girls, permanently shifting attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
In order to create an enabling environment for girls, community members also receive, GPP programming.
The Girl Power Project begins by training parents in human rights (with an emphasis on women and
children’s rights), Ugandan laws, and how to refer rights violations and crimes to the appropriate authorities.
JLMC only works with girls after their parents and teachers sign a formal agreement to value the
empowerment of girls and commit to support their daughters. A portion of these adults are trained by JLMC
to be Girl Power Advocates, volunteers who support the girls during the Girl Power Project and beyond.
Additionally, boys aged 10-14, living in the same communities and attending the same schools where the GPP
is delivered receive a smaller dose of life skills education in puberty, sexual and gender based violence and
reproductive health, building assets they too need to successfully navigate adolescence. So not only will girls
benefit, but also the communities where they reside.
A contribution from the Kathryn B. McQuade Foundation will help JLMC to directly reach
more vulnerable girls ages 10-14 and adult advocates in Central Uganda, thereby getting JLMC closer to
achieving its strategic vision of reaching 20,000 girls with The Girl Power Project

RTC HAS BEEN AWARDED A $15,000 GRANT Community Business Academy and Business Acceleration Services Program.
RTC is a nonprofit organization committed to the economic empowerment of low-income communities
through entrepreneurship. Established in Jersey City in 2004 by two Harvard graduates, RTC provides high
quality business education, year round guidance, and support to entrepreneurs. Of the folks that RTC
provides assistance to, 90% are minorities and 70% are women. The guiding objective is to assist talented
men and women in distressed communities to grow successful businesses that provide income and
employment to their owners and the community at large.

By providing high quality business education and consulting that is custom designed for the educational
needs of low income entrepreneurs, RTC assists these talented men and women to start and grow successful
businesses, which generate jobs and provides economic opportunities for themselves, their families and their
communities.

Funds will be used to cover costs associated with marketing, delivering,
managing, expanding, and enhancing RTC’s Community Business Academy and Business Acceleration
Services programs. The business academy program provides 12 weeks of intensive training in business
management skills. After the trainings, graduates receive 3 years of follow up support through the business
acceleration services program. In the coming year, RTC will offer 20 twelve week sessions of the Community
Business Academy across five different cities in two different languages. Each session will have 21 available
spaces, for a total enrollment of 420 entrepreneurs.

MMT has been awarded an $8,000 grant to support its Young Audiences Series.
MMT is continuing in 2017 its program of linking the performing arts with literacy
and reading skills for children through four productions in its Young Audiences Series. The program was
first started in 2016 to produce plays in conjunction with their literary sources, encouraging students to read
about what they had seen in the shows. Follow-up surveys with parents following the 2016 shows revealed
that 82 percent of the children read free books they received from MMT and 42 percent visited libraries to
borrow more books.
These shows are expected to engage audiences of 6,600 with free or discounted tickets. Admission
to the Waldron Stage shows will be on a pay-what-you-can basis to ensure access to a broad community
audience. Students attending all of the Young Audiences shows also will receive an estimated 1,000 free
books plus activities guides to encourage reading about the shows they see and related topics.
When distributing books, MMT’s staff asks for email addresses to send surveys to parents and teachers who
monitor the program’s effectiveness. These responses have documented the program’s intended impacts and
pointed to areas to strengthen in 2017, especially to serve children from households where there are few
books and reading is not actively encouraged.
Funds from this grant will be used to underwrite the cost of books to be distributed to children attending the
shows and to pay for creation and printing of activities guides and workbooks for distribution to the students.
Funds will primarily be spent for the 2017 Young Audiences productions and reading workshops.

SOLA has been awarded a $25,000 grant in support of their Residential Life Program.
SOLA is an Afghan-led private boarding school for Afghan girls, the
first of its kind in Afghanistan. SOLA’s mission is to provide Afghan girls a rigorous education that promotes
critical thinking, a sense of purpose, and respect for self and others.
SOLA, which is a Pashto word meaning “peace,” seeks to represent all major ethnic groups and provinces of
Afghanistan. To date SOLA students have hailed from 22 of Afghanistan’s provinces.

In Afghanistan, girls are not prepared to become leaders and their education is rarely
prioritized. Even girls who are fortunate enough to attend school often must shoulder family responsibilities,
distracting from their education as they mature. The funds from this grant will be dedicated to the
residential life program and will be used to increase opportunities for students to explore interests, engage
with educators and academic resources, and participate in sports and fitness activities. These types of
programs do not exist in public schools in Afghanistan–the residential life programming at SOLA is one of
the major ways that the school differs from all others in Afghanistan.
As a boarding school, SOLA creates an immersive, structured academic environment in Kabul for Afghan
girls from cultural backgrounds and provinces across the country.

The residential life program is a critical element of what makes SOLA a leadership school. The leadership
curriculum bridges the academic and residential life programs, providing a vehicle to integrate the formal
curriculum of subject-specific knowledge and core skills, with the informal curriculum, where students learn
values and behaviors in an inexplicit way through participating in a residential community.
Many of the students are the first girls in their families to receive an education. Through the residential life
program at SOLA, each of our students has the opportunity, many for the first time in their lives:
• to be tutored one-on-one in English and other subjects;
• to participate in student clubs with their peers;
• to learn about the benefits of physical fitness and engage in sports and outdoor activities;
• to explore geopolitical issues through intimate conversations with visiting experts;
• to grow-up with a diverse community of girls from across Afghanistan, representing many distinct
cultural backgrounds;
• to immerse themselves in English-language instruction, among many other opportunities.

SOLA students will in turn share what they have learned with their families and their home communities
across the country. They will grow up appreciating the role SOLA’s immersive residential life program played
in their personal development, and their example in society will help to spur favor towards SOLA’s education
model for girls in communities across Afghanistan.

The Foundation is pleased to continue it’s support of Project Gateway with a $25,000 grant.
The Empowerment Program is run through the Gateway School of Fashion Fusion with Craft and Business
Training and Mentoring. Through the Program, over 1000 students have been trained in hard skills such as
woodwork, metalwork, electrical training as well as Fashion Design, sewing and craft development. It has
also assisted more than 250 developing entrepreneurs in better business practice and mentored the leaders
of these groups until they are secure in Business knowledge. Over 70% of the entrepreneurs were still
running successful businesses 2 years after their training.
Most of the trainees are unemployed women, who are given the opportunity to improve their hard skills of
Craft making and / or Fashion Design as well as Business Skills training. This enables them to generate
income for themselves and their families.
Funds from this grant will be used to support individuals unable to pay the fees associated with the Program.
Learners would under normal circumstances be required to pay a fee structure. While this is built into the
budget the reality is that most of the learners are unemployed, out of school, under-educated learners.
Project Gateway is a development program and does not offer “hand-outs” as such. The learners are already
paying transport costs to reach the center 3 days a week. They travel for over an hour to get there and over
an hour to get back home. They desperately need to generate income for themselves and their families and
they feel that if they were better qualified in the hard skills of Fashion Design and sewing and had a greater
understanding of Business, they would be able to increase their income and build sustainable businesses.
The project is making a sustainable different by addressing unemployment and the lack of skills and
business education. By educating and up-skilling 20 – 25 learners per year in Fashion Design and Fusion
with Craft and by assisting 90 people per year with the Paradigm Shift Business Training program and
encouraging them to go on to the next 2 Modules which tracks their Business growth and success for a
period of at least 18 sessions, the organization believes that it makes a difference to the quality of each
person’s life. History has shown that most of the learners who study through Gateway School of Fashion
continue to generate income at varying levels for a number of years after the course. The Paradigm Shift
Course has been offered to over 2000 people in South Africa. Results so far indicate that over 70% have
increased their Business Income, and 34% of the people are now saving on a regular basis.
Project Gateway as a registered Non-Profit Organization is governed by a Constitution and Board of Directors
elected at an Annual General Meeting of the organization. The organization is overseen by a CEO, who has
considerable experience in community based programs. He is assisted in his role by a management team
consisting of skilled individuals and community representatives. Our books are audited annually. Gateway’s
Monitoring & Evaluation framework is strongly driven by the Results Based Model which measures
outcomes and impact. Baseline information is collected at the start of the project/work. This will then be
used as a platform from which to monitor our progress in terms of our intended outcomes. Monthly
statistics relevant to the program work will be recorded and used to evaluate the progress of the project. The
goals, objectives and activities detailed in this proposal will fall under the project’s monitoring and evaluation
system, and performance will be measured against these.

The UN Foundation has been awarded a $25,000 grant to support their Girl Up program.
Girl Up, the United Nations Foundation’s adolescent campaign, supports the empowerment of girls
everywhere. Since 2010, the campaign has funded UN programs that promote the health, safety, education,
and leadership of girls in developing countries and built a community of more than six hundred thousand
passionate advocates. The 25,000 youth leaders, representing more than 1700 Girl Up clubs in 90 countries,
stand up, speak up, and rise up to support the hardest to reach girls living in places where it is the hardest to
be a girl.
At the heart and soul of Girl Up, the Teen Advisory Board ensures that the Girl Up campaign stays authentic
to its voice and “by girl, for girls” mission. Made up of 21 girls, the 2017-2018 class of Teen Advisors helps
lead advocacy, provide feedback on campaign materials, and energize and inspire others to take action in
support of United Nations programs so that adolescent girls in developing countries can reach their full
potential. Composed of a widely diverse group of teenage girls, the Teen Advisors are passionate changemakers
who together spread and fuel Girl Up’s work.
This unique leadership development program separates our organization from other organizations that work
on girl’s empowerment. Teen Advisors are central to all Girl Up decision-making including advocacy
fundraising and communication strategies. This grant will allow us to continue to select Teen Advisors from
a diverse background and solely based on their individual qualifications. By supporting their travel to our
trainings and the staff members who support them, coach them and provide daily interaction, these leaders
will continue to lead the movement and build their skills as they go on to college and their future careers.
The leadership skills that Teen Advisors develop will help them change the world today and well into the
future. 21 girls will benefit from this grant during their tenure from July 2017-June 2018. The funds will be
used in the United States. A grant from the Kathryn McQuade Foundation will help support the Girl Up Teen
Advisory Board to continue to strive to make sustainable improvement in girls’ rights, education, and welfare
in places where it is hardest to be a girl.

WGEF has been awarded a $25,000 grant. The Foundation is pleased to again partner with WGEF on their Healthy Periods Initiatives.
The mission of Women’s Global Empowerment Fund is to provide women with the framework necessary to
create viable opportunities for themselves and their families. Through grassroots strategies, marginalized
women are given the tools necessary to alleviate poverty, thus facilitating sustainable development and
empowerment.
To address the issue of menstrual health, and the challenges women face with regards to access, hygiene
and stigma while in refugee or IDP camps, Women’s Global Empowerment Fund (WGEF) has launched the
Menstruation Matters project, part of the Healthy Periods Initiative – improving health, creating
livelihoods. Because of inequality, gender taboos, and socio-cultural factors, menstrual health is overlooked. In many
refugee camps no regular supply of products is available. Due to the lack of access and affordability of
sanitary products, women and girls often use: cloth, leaves, mattress stuffing, and other ineffective and
unsafe materials. These materials are unhygienic, uncomfortable, ineffective and unacceptable.
As the world becomes more conflicted, increasing the numbers of people on the move, forced from their
homes and villages into camps and centers, the basic needs of women and girls are not met. One of the
worst refugee crisis is happening on the border of Uganda and S. Sudan. S. Sudanese people have been
forced to flee their homes due to increasing and brutal violence. Because WGEF is located in Gulu, northern
Uganda, these camps are on our doorstep and it became clear that we needed to help our neighbors.
In the refugee camps of Balore and Pagirinya, approximately 9000 women and girls have no access to
sanitary products. It has been over a year since any sanitary products have been delivered. This is unjust
and undignified. Menstruation Matters not only provides product but education on managing their periods,
in a safe and healthy way.
The funding requested will be used to manufacture 7000 pads per month, delivered to two refugee camps,
along with an educational component for the next 12 months. The requested funding will be spent monthly
over the next 12 months in Gulu, Uganda, and the northern region near the S. Sudanese border.
By providing funds for locally produced sanitary products, not only creates and supports local economies,
but will provide long term health benefits and education to women with few, if any, access to critical
resources around menstrual health. As the world is in conflict, this project supports sustainable
development and health benefits to those most in need.
WGEF is committed to providing women and girls living in nearby refugee camps access to this critical
product and education. All women deserve respect and to live with dignity, when women don’t have access
to relevant information or appropriate sanitary products, this is impossible.