When it comes to changing the world, no one knows better than Rise Up Leaders how much time, energy, and effort it can take to make even the slightest improvement. Rise Up has been working to create lasting gender equity change in education access, health care, and economic opportunity for the last 15 years. 

In honor of our special anniversary this year, we are featuring 15 ways we are changing the world — with Rise Up Leaders and as an organization. This list is not exhaustive. But we hope it inspires you and reflects our commitment, passion, and optimism, buoyed by Rise Up Leaders who refuse to give up.

1. Ensuring women and girl-focused health services in Nigeria: Rise Up Leader Omokejimi Samuel Abayomi transformed adolescent and maternal health care for 400,000 women and girls in Lagos State. Omokejimi secured a commitment from the state’s primary health care board to create a new budget line ensuring that public health clinics effectively have a dedicated budget for women and girl-focused health services.

2. Offering a unique bundle of support for local leaders:  What makes Rise Up’s model unique is our bundle of support – not only do we provide local leaders with rigorous leadership and advocacy training, but we offer competitive grant funding, and connection to a global network of peers, funders, and allies. This bundle of support has earned us a reputation of excellence in scalable, locally-led policy change. 

3. Improving education access for girls in India: In Tonk, a district in the Indian state of Rajasthan, female literacy rate stands at just 45% with 80% of adolescent girls having never attended school or dropped out – Rise Up Leader Hemant Kumar Sharma was determined to make a change. Hemant and the Centre for Unfolding Learning Potentials (CULP) improved education opportunities for more than 540,000 out-of-school girls throughout Rajasthan by securing “bridge courses”, or specialized training, from the District Secretary for School Education.

4. Protecting incarcerated individuals’ rights in South Africa: Rise Up Leader Unathi Mahlati and Just Detention International improved protections and conditions for 133,998 incarcerated men, women, and gender-nonconforming people across 243 correctional facilities in South Africa, providing mechanisms to report abuse, mandatory training for prison staff, and community oversight.

5. Amplifying Rise Up Leaders’ voices on the global stage: Rise Up Leaders build upon each other’s ideas, experiences, and expertise to foster learning and development in their own communities and countries – and on the global stage. Leaders and Rise Up’s global team attend international conferences (including Women Deliver) and events to share their expertise.  

6. Enhancing health care programs for transgender people in Mexico: With support from Rise Up, Rise Up Leader Andrés Costilla Castro helped pass legislation that guaranteed 17,000 transgender people’s access to governmental health programs and specialized comprehensive services in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

7. Promoting girls’ leadership: At Rise Up, we believe that girls are powerful catalysts for change with the ability to transform their own lives, communities, and countries. Over the years, the impact of Rise Up girl leaders’ advocacy efforts are incredible – more than 700 Rise Up girl leaders over the last few years have positively impacted the lives of 8.9 million people in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States.

8. Strengthening economic opportunity for single mothers in Mexico: Rise Up Leader Blanca Estela Gardea improved economic opportunities of more than 200,000 single mothers in San Luis Potosí, Mexico by securing them access to government programs, such as tax incentives to start a business, educational opportunities, and financial support for self-employment.

9. Providing highly tailored training: All Rise Up Leaders participate in an intensive Leadership and Advocacy Accelerator training that offers a strong core curriculum with sessions highly tailored to Leaders’ country, context, and particular needs, and is delivered in a way that fosters genuine learning.

10. Connecting women to sexual and reproductive health information in India: Rise Up Leader Gayatri Parameswaran helped launch India’s first Hindi website focused on ending gender-based violence. With Rise Up’s support and funding, Gayatri used WhatsApp messaging to connect women, reaching 1.5 million people monthly with critical sexual and reproductive health and rights information.

11. Diversifying political representation in Brazil to include more women and girls: The underrepresentation of young people in Brazilian politics is a pressing issue, with less than 5% of individuals aged 18 to 29 holding positions in the country’s federal legislative body and women making up only 1% of that representation. Rise Up Leader Letícia Bahia is hoping to flip these statistics by increasing the participation of young people, particularly adolescent girls, in the legislative houses of Brazil and guaranteeing a minimum quota for youth candidates in elections.

12. Focusing our impact: At Rise Up, we intentionally focus our efforts in countries where we can make the greatest impact. We are currently growing local leaders’ advocacy efforts in India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, the United States, and South Africa and sustain support for our work and leaders in Brazil, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Liberia, Malawi, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and El Salvador.

13. Securing COVID relief funds for marginalized communities in India: With Rise Up’s support, Panchshila Rajesh Kumbharkar was working with Adivasi and Dalit women to advocate for equal protection for these marginalized groups under existing laws. When COVID hit, Panchshila used her existing connections with the community and the advocacy skills she learned from Rise Up to successfully advocate for dedicated COVID relief funds for over 350,000 people in the Dalit and Adivasi communities.

14. Keeping girls safe in school in Nigeria: Rise Up Leader Esther Osunro launched an advocacy strategy that protected over 1.4 million school children, including 500,000 girls, from sexual abuse and mistreatment in schools across Lagos State in Nigeria.

15. Fostering meaningful partnerships: Through trusted networks and established relationships, Rise Up connects nonprofit, corporate, and foundation partners with leaders on the ground who know best what their communities need in the context of the social, economic, and political situation in their countries. Rise Up Leaders expand their power and achieve meaningful, lasting change with our model of trust and support.

We will be highlighting Rise Up’s 15th anniversary throughout the year. You can follow along on our social channels (X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn) and see anniversary posts by searching the hashtag #RiseUp15.