Our Sectors

Gender Equality

Technical Support Toward Gender Equality

CHF identifies gender equality and the full realization of women's and girls' rights as goals in themselves, as well as keys to sustaining rural livelihoods. CHF works towards gender equality and women's rights in three areas.

Strengthening Gender Equality in Civil Society Organizations

International development projects can only realize and sustain gender equality gains if civil society organizations have a strong gender equality culture. To strengthen this culture, CHF works with partners to carry out participatory gender equality organizational needs assessments, to frame organizational gender policies and strategies and to create gender action plans for their implementation. CHF provides comprehensive training and coaching programs to help partners implement their plans, and to identify and communicate results generated through implementation. Long-distance support, local expertise and technical assistance workshops provide partners with practical tools towards gender equality in their organizations.

Gender Equality in the Project Cycle

CHF provides coaching and technical assistance to civil society organizations and governments in gender analysis, gender-sensitive results-based management, and gender‑sensitive monitoring and evaluation. CHF focuses on identifying key gender issues and addressing them with measurable program design elements that are implemented throughout the life of the project.

Gender Equality in Programming

CHF provides partners and donors with gender-sensitive programming in food security, small scale enterprise development, post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction, and HIV/AIDS. In Zimbabwe, for example, CHF and SAFIRE tailored its agriculture programming towards labour-saving activities so that women affected by HIV/AIDS were able to grow a nutritious variety of food for orphans in their care with relatively little labour. In Kenya, CHF partnered with Equity Bank to underwrite a unique financial service that allows groups of poor women without capital to access loans for their community group businesses.