Vision
To develop, over time, a movement giving voice and power to grassroots women's local visions and initiatives, attracting long term partners, and creating new policies, to expand and strengthen their leadership.

Network Focus
GROOTS operates as a flexible network linking leaders and groups in poor rural and urban areas in the South and the North. To nurture relationships of mutual support and solidarity among women engaged in redeveloping their communities, the network is open to grassroots groups and their partners who share a commitment to four basic goals:

• To strengthen women's participation in the development of communities and the approaches to problem solving.
• To help urban and rural grassroots women's groups identify and share their successful development approaches and methods globally.
• To focus international attention on grassroots women's needs and capabilities.

 

GROOTS Kenya is leading the organization of GROOTS Africa in the World Social Forum, being held in Nairobi from January 20-25, 2007. We welcome you and your partners to join us in these activities, and look forward to also participating in relevant activities you may be organizing.

It has clearly emerged from grassroots organizations throughout Africa that poor women and girls are shouldering the largest burden of privatization and decentralization of health care, education and other basic services. The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has fed on the negative impacts of global capitalism and harmful policies, which have destroyed many social networks in Africa. Women today are at the forefront of recreating these networks, at huge costs and sacrifices that are neither recognized nor acknowledged.

GROOTS is organizing this program in an effort to reverse grassroots women's invisibility, and to take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate women's contributions and capacities. Grassroots women will share how they are leading efforts to strengthen families and communities that are struggling to cope with the pandemic, thru Home-Based Care, by caring for their neighbors, sustaining livelihoods, bridging the gap to the formal health care system, providing nutritional support, counseling and solidarity. The activities being organized will give grassroots women a chance to dialogue with each other and with partners, and to build on existing strategies (such as the Home-Based Care Alliance), to build alliances among themselves to combat the forces of marginalization, exclusion and oppression.

The program is being organized around two themes:

Turning the HIV/AIDS Pandemic into a Development Opportunity
These activities will be anchored by grassroots Home-Based Caregivers and will highlight their contributions to forging community responses to HIV/AIDS

• A one-day workshop to share stories of women's work in Home-Based Care
• A field visit to the Mathare Mother's Development Center (January 26th)
• A 5 KM walk to create awareness of the contributions of Home-Based Caregivers

Is "Another World Possible" my World?
This program is meant to bring forward the concerns and contributions of young grassroots women activists, and to shift their roles from targets of programs to being leaders of their own priorities and plans

• A half-day dialogue on young women's and girls' needs in a better world
• A space within the Home-based workshop for young women, including orphans to share their experiences

For more information, contact Esther Mwaura-Muiru at GROOTS Kenya (E: grootsk@grootskenya.org, T: 254 2718977) or Shannon Hayes at GROOTS International (E: Shannon.hayes@huairou.org).

GROOTS International

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