Global Grassroots

Global Grassroots' Academy for Conscious Change is an 18-24 month incubator offering social venture development skills, leadership training, personal transformation practices, seed grants and high-engagement support to help disadvantaged women initiate their own civil society organizations. Our Women's Academy participants include the most underserved groups of women, including widows, genocide survivors, women living with HIV/AIDS, survivors of violence and individuals living on less than $2 per day. Our Young Women's Academy works with vulnerable yet motivated young women during the nine-month break between secondary school graduation and the start of university when they are at risk of dropping out due to family pressure to work, attention from male predators, early marriage, and/or teen pregnancy.

We begin by helping survivors map out their capabilities that can be leveraged for social change, so as to deepen their sense of personal power.  Global Grassroots also uses scientifically-demonstrated mind-body trauma healing techniques to address post traumatic stress from war and sexual violence. Next, we employ practices in mindfulness to help these future change leaders expand their sense of self-awareness, develop tools for transforming suffering, cultivate compassion and initiate social change responsibly. 

Finally, our training provides the hard skills needed to create a viable social enterprise that will address a core issue facing women and girls, such as water access or domestic violence. Participants map social issue priorities and diagnose core causes. Next they undergo a rigorous creative problem-solving process to define solutions that will achieve systemic change, then construct a comprehensive plan to advance their solution.

After completion of the training, our staff facilitates each team in their project design over the course of 6 months. Once we feel the project has met our criteria for social impact and sustainability, we provide a seed grant of between $3000 and $7000 per project. Global Grassroots then provides high-engagement advisory support to each team for a minimum of 12 months after launch, and works to develop strategic partnerships and other support services to strengthen each community of change agents.