Encourage. Equip. Empower.

What We Do

Rise Up believes in the power of learning alongside others. We create space for women to come together to heal, learn, and support one another. This ongoing support and connection make all the difference as they work to break cycles of discrimination, injustice, and violence. Together, we are bringing about positive change in their lives and communities, leading to gender equality.

We focus on four primary areas, including:

Health & Wellbeing

GOAL: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being

  • facilitate resilience building, trauma awareness, and healing

  • bring awareness to women’s realities and promote positive change

  • educate on health, hygiene, and disease prevention

One of the ways Rise Up achieves this goal is by providing training on the causes and effects of trauma on individuals, families, and communities. These trainings provide hope and healing for those struggling with pain and suffering issues in their own lives. These women take what they have learned and experienced back to their families and communities to help others. Our trauma workshops focus on understanding grief, healing from trauma, and developing practices that build resilience.

Servant Leadership & Education

GOAL: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for women and girls

  • facilitate holistic cohort-based multi-year leadership development

  • support, coach, and mentor leaders

  • provide quality education for adolescent girls and support teachers

Rise Up partners with well-respected local organizations to provide cohort-based leadership development programs. We believe in developing relationships and initiatives that go deep, not wide. The leaders gain support and strengthen their capacity through training in leadership principles and practices, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, women’s realities, general health and disease prevention, trauma recovery and resilience, counseling, economic empowerment, and community development. We also partner with a girls’ secondary boarding school in Rwanda.

Conflict Transformation, Justice & Peacebuilding

GOAL: Promote peaceful societies and provide access to justice

  • conduct conflict resolution, peacebuilding, restorative justice, and reconciliation workshops

  • provide access to legal aid for the most vulnerable

Rise Up gathers local leaders to discuss peacebuilding and conflict transformation through a holistic process to reduce violence and promote positive relationships that promote social justice. The focus is creating a desired future for all people through developing new ways of thinking and being. Workshops are designed to engage the head and heart through reflection, dialogue, and action planning.

Meet Candide, a Women’s Leadership Training Initiative (WLTI) graduate, as she shares how the WLTI has transformed her life and influence in her community.

Social & Economic Empowerment

GOAL: Promote safe, resilient, and sustainable communities through income-generating activities, decent work, and poverty reduction

  • equip entrepreneurs by providing life skills training and creating income-generating opportunities

  • offer financial/budget training and access to micro-loans

  • provide tools/equipment for seed business

  • support agricultural mixed-farming initiatives and livestock pass-forward programs

Rise Up serves alongside local organizations and community leaders to infuse hope and help by providing opportunities for women to gain the skills necessary to generate income and support themselves and their families. Each initiative is tailored to the local context and may include skill-based training, business practices, mentoring, budgeting, creating cooperatives, or forming savings groups. The goal is to reduce vulnerability and move toward self-sustainability while fostering growth in the local economy. We believe when a woman is equipped and empowered, she becomes a catalyst for transforming the entire community.