Reaching out
At Women Thrive Worldwide, we believe investing in women is key to alleviating global poverty. When women are empowered politically, economically, and socially, they can become some of the most powerful agents of change, even lifting entire communities out of poverty. However, women around the world face unequal social and economic barriers that prevent them from fulfilling their potential. Women Thrive seeks to help women living in poverty overcome these barriers by listening to their stories, bringing their voices to the attention of governments here and in their home countries, and advocating for U.S. foreign assistance policies that address their needs. Pretty cool, if you ask me!
Of course, you can’t do advocacy work without supporters. We depend on the help of our supporters around the United States, women and men working together, to make our grassroots campaigns effective. As the U.S. Outreach Intern, my job is all about engaging our U.S. supporters in our mission – asking them not only to support Women Thrive’s work but also to look for other ways in which they can invest in women.
Throughout my internship, I’ve learned that Women Thrive engages its supporters in a number of ways. One of the biggest ways we do this is by building our online communities through social media. Through webinars, workshops, and the wisdom of my supervisor (and social media guru), Erin, I’ve learned a few tricks of the trade on how nonprofits can leverage social media to grow their organization’s reach. I’ve put them to use on Women Thrive’s Facebook page and Twitter, where I post from time to time – check them out! We usually post articles and alerts related to our work and our partner organizations, but we’re aiming to expand our outreach by launching an online book club this summer. We want to feature books about inspiring women around the world. I’ll keep you posted!
It’s important to reach out to our supporters offline as well. Recently, we held a happy hour/shopping fundraiser with Styleliner, a pop-up “fashion truck,” where a portion of the proceeds was donated to Women Thrive! To get locals to come to the event, I was tasked with researching D.C.-area fashion bloggers and inviting them personally. I had a lot of fun spending a few hours at work looking up fashion blogs (although I may have gotten some funny looks from my coworkers - I was working, I swear!) and was really impressed with the great response we got! A number of bloggers attended the event and many of those who couldn’t make it sent kind messages of support, asking to be updated on Women Thrive’s work.
Another way we keep supporters engaged – and gain new supporters – is by working with our coalition of U.S. partner organizations. We often pass along relevant news and action alerts to our list of supporters and vice versa. We also collaborate with our partners at events like the upcoming gender roundtable discussion next week, where our founder, Ritu Sharma, will discuss the global gender gap with representatives from our partner organizations. I’m also attending a series of workshops on reproductive health advocacy hosted by one of our partners, but maybe I’ll touch on those more in a later post.
Anyways, this is just a taste of the type of work I’ve been doing with Women Thrive Worldwide. Looking forward to the rest of the summer and sharing my experiences with you!
