When you Empower a Women a Empower a Community
Our vision is to create a world where women can effect social change through economic empowerment. To bring this vision into reality, our mission is to empower vulnerable and underrepresented women to socioeconomic independence through entrepreneurship. We exist to empower women in nations in need because we know that it can have a direct impact on a country's prosperity and peace. Our goal is to advance the United Nations Millennium Development Goals of gender equality by socioeconomically empowering vulnerable women in developing nations.
The objective of Willow Tree Roots is to provide underserved women with income-generating and business development skills through our Women’s Socioeconomic Empowerment Projects by first guiding them in discovering their self-worth, sparking their passions, and then giving them the tools they need to succeed as business and community leaders. Our Women’s Socioeconomic Empowerment Project is currently implemented in the countries of Kenya, Peru, Nepal and the United States.
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Willow Tree Roots is a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity organization.
The last decade has been marked by a Global Financial Crisis and increased violence and armed conflict that reaches every corner of the world. And although women comprise half of the world’s population they make up 70% of the world’s poor. The empowerment of women can lead to an increase in global financial ethics. Studies have also shown that empowering women in developing countries can have a direct impact on increasing that country’s economic sustainability as well as decreasing the amount of armed conflict within a country. Women in business are more likely to use their profits to improve their community as a whole, such as educating their children and providing health care to their community members. Women are also far less likely to send their children into armed conflict.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has recognized that:
“there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, or to reduce infant and maternal mortality. No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and promote health - including the prevention of HIV/AIDS. No other policy is as powerful in increasing the chances of education for the next generation. And I would also venture that no policy is more important in preventing conflict, or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended.”
"WHAT WE NEED IS A REVOLUTION LED BY WOMEN"
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
speaking at the
World Economic Forum
Davos, Switzerland
January 27, 2012