#AmplifyHerVOICE for Equality

Institutions need to change in order to protect women and girls from violence and promote their leadership—but women and girls themselves must lead this revolution. VOICE ensures that the insight and leadership of women and girls inform interventions to promote gender equality by creating a platform and environment that celebrates, elevates, and supports their voices.  We believe they know best that equality cannot wait.  

VOICE’s four-pronged approach lays the foundation for expanding women’s power and influence. First by promoting feminist leadership through our bespoke training program, then connecting women to a vast network and resource hub of our own creation. We produce inspired media for social change, addressing the barriers that women and girls face as leaders, consumers, and in the workforce at all levels.  These efforts unlock the power and influence of women as the leaders that they are, and recognize them  for the benefit of society. 

VOICE's work aims to move a critical mass to lead the way to shift oppressive power imbalances, keeping harmful systems in place. We are committed to both internal/external accountability, and feminist practice and movement building.

Our data/location focus has been pulled using US unemployment rates, poverty, median household income, available state level women's funds, and the impact of COVID-19. The states chosen for our work initially are Arizona, New Mexico, Mississippi, Utah and Louisiana. We anticipate supporting 5,000 women through our solution.

VOICE's four-pronged approach:

The Leadership Program addresses the lack of women in senior roles across sectors by creating viable paths of training, fast-tracking young/mid-career women into critical sectors, pairing them with mentors.

The Network and Resource Hub dismantles barriers to access, creating a network connecting women-led organizations for knowledge-sharing and partnership. 

VOICE’s Mission-driven media will amplify the issues that women face, like sexual harassment and abuse, challenging wage gaps, and unpaid care. Our various media channels spotlight voices of women in leadership and women doing the work.

Our Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts call for action for their female employees, increasing understanding of burdens of women/girls in their consumer bases and that women face in their organizations. 

VOICE is building a global network of women and girls impacted or at risk of violence that uniquely affects them -- because they are female -- to promote greater livelihood and economic sustainability. The VOICE Network and Information Hub will ensure that women and girls have influence and voice in a range of issues and develop the best solutions to mitigate there varied risks to violence that can impact them in the workspace.  

Together we will develop and provide innovative high and low technological solutions to enable women and girls to be productive in their communities in a safe and secure way, free from behaviors of violence that hold them back.  VOICE will also serve as an idea exchange space for women and girls, building networks that will be safe and secure for at-risk audiences to engage in.  We will foster communication, collaboration, and trust, allowing us to rethink what it means to build news pathways and increase equality in the workplace for women and girls.  VOICE is looking to take an intentional and continuous approach to building a network that grows our programmatic efforts through these new pathways, trainings and tools.

VOICE specializes in serving ethnically diverse survivors from marginalized and vulnerable communities.  Our solution serves marginalized women and girls living in areas with high rates of poverty and unemployment. Our data and location focus has been pulled using US unemployment rates, poverty, median household income, and available state level women's funds, as well as COVID-19 rates of infection. The states we have chosen surfaced as having the greatest needs.

We will use tactics to measure both shorter-term positive and negative trends as well as longitudinal changes that will extend across a 10-year timeframe and beyond, as well as apply a variety of Automatic Intelligence tools to track ways in which media targets/undermines women. 

VOICE will form a research panel to have access to a variety of different respondent stakeholder groups.  Having a solid panel, working with us over time will allow for tracking of social norms changes needed to expand women’s power and influence. The panel will include different stakeholder female cohorts and the impact will be direct and measuable and the women we serve will be a part of forming the solution.

VOICE will open doors of power,  leveraging  our distinctly feminist approach to build a robust Leadership Program.  We will mentor women/girls, and build the capacity of women experts to become leaders in addressing violence.  This allows VOICE to center work on women/ girls-building equality, creating power and leverage,  creating efficiency and effectiveness.

VOICE will serve as a knowledge hub for identifying  break-through ideas women/girls have for addressing equality issues in states we serve;  AZ/LA/MS/NM, and UT. We will build power/influence, connecting women, corporations, policy-makers, donors, and researchers; giving women a platform to scale efforts

Mendy Marsh-FT, VOICE ED: 20+ years in women’s leadership/empowerment. Her career includes work at UNICEF, Global Violence Against Women and Girls in Emergencies/other global non-profit work. Masters in Public Health and Social Work from Columbia University.  

Chiderah-FT, VOICE Communications/Marketing: Joined VOICE with 10+ years experience in journalism/strategic communications for NBC News and Marriott International. She brings extensive media training and holds an MBA-focus in marketing. 

Autumn Asher-BlackDeer is a member of  Cheyenne/Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, is a strong proponent for American Indian higher education, advocate for survivors of sexual violence, and is committed to achieving equity throughout Indian Country. 

VOICE prioritizes diversity of professional, cultural and lived experiences, and values bringing together experts and emerging young professionals. We are dedicated to listening to, respecting and supporting diverse voices, and creating an inclusive workplace culture that brings together individuals with a broad range of skills, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. This includes for women, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ employees and partners, and ensuring that workplace provisions are made to be accessible for those with disabilities.

We are committed to ensuring our processes and culture mirror the feminist values that drive our whole body of work on gender equality, women’s leadership, and addressing violence against women and girls. 

VOICE’s approach centers the forward movement of women’s rights, with an emphasis on disadvantageous economic structures that oppress women and entire communities, and ignore their basic needs and human rights. We see with a racial justice lens, committed to overthrowing systems of oppression. 

VOICE will open doors of power, leveraging  our distinctly feminist approach to build a robust Leadership Program.  We will mentor women and girls, and build the capacity of women experts. This allows VOICE to center work on women and girls-building equality, creating power and leverage, andcreating efficiency and effectiveness.

VOICE will serve as a knowledge hub for identifying break-through ideas women and girls have for addressing equality issues in states we serve; Arizona currently and next in Louisiana, New Mexico, and Utah. We will build power/influence, connecting women, corporations, policy-makers, donors, and researchers.

While our approach is grounded in social norms change, we are applying our work in one state and are ready to move across multiple, larger and more influential platforms with women across industries, corporations, and media to address barriers to leadership, and power and influence with a feminist lens, a never-before-seen approach.

VOICE will scale efforts in meaningful ways: going deep within states of primary focus, with key stakeholder groups to ensure a process of lasting change. We are in-process of scaling our work to maintain a systematic process. That includes addressing unmet or ineffectively met needs for populations we serve, optimizing the model(s) we use, assuring decision-makers and funders that what we are doing is different, tracking performance and learnings, mobilizing support for our network, and building out plans for expansion, replication, and even greater collaboration.

VOICE will apply a change model that is rigorously tested on what works to promote social change for women’s empowerment, directly from our team’s expertise.  To expand women’s power and influence, we have to change the patriarchal structures of US society and beyond, that do not yet value women’s leadership, nor provide environments where our leadership is enabled. 

VOICE will take these steps to show how the technology works:

Step 1: Create and strengthen platforms that embrace and support  young/mid-career leadership development across essential change industries.
Step 2: Cultivate an environment that allows women and organizations they lead to collectively reflect on their vision, power and influence, troubleshoot the barriers they face, and imagine the future they want. 
Step 3: Build multiple platforms and technology solutions for women-led organizations to verbalize their vision for change related to their power and influence, and the barriers they face inside all sectors as well as across media channels.
Step 4: Design multiple avenues for key stakeholder groups/sectors to publicly commit and demonstrate their understanding and readiness to generate change.
Step 5: Design methods to collectively communicate that change is happening across stakeholder groups/sectors.
Step 6: Build a long-term environment of change that bolsters women’s power and influence that is supported across key stakeholder groups/sectors.

VOICE's theory of change is rooted in our values and practice-led evidence developed by women’s rights experts, technicians and activists over decades and across sectors. We are proud to draw from a long history of feminist approaches to distill and enact radical change to increase women’s power and influence. 

VOICE is a catalyst for change, to create equality for women and eradicate violence against them.  We can achieve this if women’s movements are fully supported, if women are given a viable path to leadership, if the expertise and experiences of women and girls are valued and celebrated, if corporations are accountable to their female employees, and if the humanitarian sector opened the doors of power to women and girls, we will greatly expand their power and influence in the world, allowing them to fully exercise their economic, social and political rights living fulfilling lives.

Rigorous Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) will be key for the success of this project over the next several years. The project team will track progress toward goals and expected results on an ongoing basis to enable an agile and evidence-based adaptive management approach.  VOICE will outline key performance indicators in collaboration with stakeholders linked to our program objectives:

1. To create viable paths to leadership through fellowship training and mentorship.
2. To provide women leaders across industries with new knowledge and networks to enable their success.
3. To change media houses both inside and out to change public perceptions of women.
4. To help corporations be accountable to their female employees and consumer bases. 

Our largest barrier:

VOICE aims to increase the power and influence of women through an approach that generates opportunities to dismantle barriers that hold women back.  

VOICE's Leadership Program supports women’s readiness to engage in management positions through network building/mentorship, ensuring they thrive in critical sectors, such as finance, technology, or media.
Our Media strategies center around normalizing the stories women want to tell, in order to awaken social consciousness to barriers we face, as well as amplify the solutions for key stakeholders to take action on inside media houses and out.

Our CSR efforts help corporations understand what women face, in private and public spheres, while supporting them in designing/ implementing actions to address these barriers.  Our interventions will transform CSR efforts, addressing workplace sexual harassment as a standard, and positioning women to expand their power and influence in all aspects of their lives. Corporations will understand women and girl consumers from the lens of gender equality, drawing links between such equality and an increased bottom line.

VOICE will use tactics to measure both shorter-term positive and negative trends as well as longitudinal changes across a 10-year timeframe and beyond, as well as applying a variety of Automatic Intelligence tools to track  ways in which media targets/undermines women.

We will form a research panel to have access to a variety of different respondent stakeholder groups.  Having a solid panel, working with us over time will allow for tracking of social norms changes needed to expand women’s power and influence. The panel will include different stakeholder cohorts: women we can track over 10 years of their professional/business experience; women that can help us understand perceptions in professional settings and by the media; a cohort of marketing and communications team members from a subset of corporations we target; a cohort of media professionals across different media houses; and a cohort of the general population.

VOICE’s team of experts, who collectively have over 150 years of experience and our work will be guided by women- and girl-led organizations, and women and girls themselves. We stand beside a deep network of women and girl-led organizations/activists on this issue, working toward a world where women and girls are respected leaders in designing/implementing solutions to eradicate violence and are capable of achieving greater levels of economic empowerment.  

Considering the recent COVID-19 reality, VOICE is supporting women-led organizations in countries in over fourteen countries. VOICE is expanding these efforts by hosting virtual learning sessions, facilitating network building, implementing capacity-sharing workshops, and defining a partnership model that centralizes women’s rights organizations – all while documenting the impacts of COVID-19 on women and girls in emergency settings.

VOICE is currently supporting over 400 women- and girl-led organizations, in conflict-affected areas within regional- and country-level networks, where they benefit from connection, collaboration, shared learnings and resources, and collective advocacy.

Key partners include: The Equality Institute, UNICEF, UN Women, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, Humanitarian 2 Humanitarian, RedR UK, the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria.

VOICE is creating a global network of women and girl leaders, while supporting existing ones, to transform outdated practices and build innovative solutions. VOICE is partnering with and mobilizing women and girl-led organizations to help aid agencies do better. We are creating a unique model to help these groups break free from the current hierarchical and restrictive system that does not value local knowledge, especially the lived and expert knowledge of women and girls. 

To succeed, VOICE must help challenge powerful institutions’ assumptions about working with women- and girl-led organizations. We will do so by increasing opportunities for understanding and communication between the two. VOICE is leveraging its experience with both sides––understanding the complex humanitarian and development industry systems, approaches and processes, as well as the perspectives and methods of local groups––to bridge the gap, facilitate dialogue, and establish mutually beneficial collaboration. Through research and innovative technology, we amplify locally driven, sustainable and evidence-based solutions from some of the most challenging conflicts and disaster-prone areas of the world. When combined with tool development and capacity building of both humanitarian actors/donor agencies and women- and girl-led organizations, this will result in greater direct resourcing of these organizations and their solutions to addressing VAWG. These efforts will also lead to long-term gains in furthering gender equality and improving employment paths for women and girls across the US. 

VOICE is building financial sustainability in  a manner that combines grants, donations, fee for services models and raising investment capital.  Early funding has allowed VOICE to quickly scale toward being a $3 million organization during the start-up phase, while looking to triple it’s capacity in the next 5 years.  VOICE’s approach is unique and innovative, but the work however is not, humanitarian organizations have been failing women and girls  for decades in disaster-prone areas and conflict-challenged regions for decades and the existence of violence against women and girls in these regions remain at an all time high.  VOICE’s funding model creates an opportunity for foundation and governmental funding to build and sustain key programming, while fee for service, individual donations, and investment capital can begin to support the long-term vision for growth.  VOICE will remain open to seeking funding sources that align with mission, support those we serve and create opportunities to build the agency internally and externally in regions we serve.

VOICE has raised $300,000 in 2020 to support our programming efforts related to this work through the Walmart Foundation.

VOICE is working toward sustaining a $3 million budget within 3 years and a $10 million budget in 5 years to amplify locally driven, sustainable and evidence-based solutions from some of the most challenging conflicts and disaster-prone areas of the world.  VOICE has received and is pursuing funding from multiple sources including foundation and governmental funding, donations, investment capital and fee for services models.

Program Support: $750,000

Administration: $150,000

Equipment and Supplies: $50,000

VOICE is applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge because we believe that our approach to economic sustainability through gainful employment in the US  promotes equality, will create leadership opportunities, and eradicate barriers for women and girls, with industry-leading innovation that specifically takes the voices of women and girls into account.  Reimagining pathways to employment has become essential for full participation in the modern economy, yet there is a gender divide in creating gainful employment opportunities that limits women's potential, and undermining gains made in gender equality in recent decades.  

When women have access to gainful employment, their freedom to engage fully with the opportunities it affords can be limited and can often mean that they are at increased risk of abuse and exploitation. 

It is time that this reality is given space on the MIT stage.  We need partners in this space, but an organization like VOICE that exists to support women- and girl-led organizations maximize their potential, needs to be in the lead to support the voices of women and girls to be heard and to lead the change that is needed with building pathways to employment that are meaningful for women and set the stage for girls in years to come.

Voice will be seeking more partners to grow our network and build out a more solid domestic partnership platform in the key areas that align with our four-pronged strategy. We currently have 400 partners globally.

VOICE's focus will be on identifying innovative organizations and companies that we can work with in New Mexico, Arizona, Mississippi, Utah and Louisiana given our focus on building local efforts align with VOICE’s mission and seek to make bold and lasting change in creating new and innovative pathways to employment for marginalized women.