Find Your Power's Convictions
Access to information is a fundamental right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is critical for exercising basic socio-economic and political rights. While over 90 countries claim a statutory right to information, many of them limit the access and full enjoyment of this right to information, and the myriad of benefits that it provides, to only one half of their population.
The power of information as an effective tool to know and assess one’s rights is enormous. With access to information one can be well informed, responsible in making independent decisions, and assertive in demanding one’s rights.
Since accessibility to basic resources and information via the internet is scarce for many women, especially those in developing countries, there is an overall lack of agency that leads to independence, financially and otherwise. These women are unable to discover the basic resources such as local job searches, free online courses to learn marketable skills, how and where to find more markets for their products, and services that help them gain independence and ultimately give them a higher quality of life. Additionally, an intimidation of technology, especially in older generations, keeps women outside of technology circles.
With women making up 70% of the world’s poor population and remaining poorer than men in all racial and ethnic groups, Find Your Power has chosen to gear their efforts toward women in hopes of breaking the cycles that perpetuate women being segregated into lower paying occupations, bearing the costs of raising children, and domestic and sexual violence that push women into the cycle of poverty.
As long as access to resources and opportunities remain determined by race, class, and gender, women will experience the brunt of the burden of poverty and inequality. As Terry Tempest Williams wrote, “When women suffer, children suffer. To empower women is to empower a community.” And that is precisely what Find Your Power aims to do.