More than 100,000 women in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, and Tanzania have engaged in community-based activities such as livelihoods and leadership training, advocacy efforts, and community organizing through Engage partner organizations over the past six years.
When I started with [Engage], that was the first time I began going outside. Before that, I was the kind of person who couldn’t even speak in front of four or five people in my own home. But now, by the grace of Allah, I can speak in front of even five hundred people without any hesitation.
Engage! Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship is a six-and-a-half-year initiative funded by Global Affairs Canada and convened by Coady Institute (Canada) with five partners across five countries in three continents.
Engage works primarily to support the leadership capacity of informal sector women as they address key issues they are facing through asset-based, feminist approaches. Key areas include:
- the future of work
- participation in community governance
- women’s leadership and feminist approaches
- young women as entrepreneurs and agents of community change
- climate resilience and adaptation
- asset-based approaches to reducing urban and rural poverty through economic development
From March 25 – 27, 2026 more than 100 women leaders gathered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to share stories of change, learning innovations, and to map the future of the work and partnership. Attendees included grassroots women leaders from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and India (and virtually Bangladesh and Haiti), project partner staff, Coady graduates from Nigeria, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, representatives from Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian High Commission in Tanzania, and partners of regional Global Affairs Canada funded projects such as Rural Women Cultivating Change (RWCC).
Assuntha Fleurant of le Centre Haitien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (Haiti) leads a panel discussion about innovation and impact for youth leadership.
Members of a Tanzanian Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) knowledge centre share stories of change from their respective communities focused on reduction of gender-based violence (GBV) for women and girls.
Hina Shehzadi of Coady Institute in Canada welcomes everyone to the Gathering on the opening day in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Throughout the three-day event, discussions and activities focused on themes such as asset-based community development (ABCD), climate change adaptation, youth leadership, solidarity and network building, livelihoods, agency, and resilience, as well as monitoring, evaluation and learning.
In addition to community-level activities, the initiative has prioritized supporting co-learning and collaboration across partner organizations’ contexts, contributing to both individual and organizational development for partner organizations and staff. Anna Sangai (TGNP) and Eric Smith (Community Forests International; formerly, Coady Institute) facilitated a session focused on innovative practices and impact for South-to-South learning in which themes of localization, collective impact, and reducing barriers through technology emerged.
Attending the Gathering was first time that some participants had ever travelled outside their communities or countries. Members of partner organizations and participants of community-level activities bravely took the stage to share their stories of learning, leadership, advocacy, and local community change as participants of Engage. The Gathering included presentations, dialogue, and story sharing in many languages including Swahili, Amharic, Bangla, Creole, Gujarati, and English; attendees worked across boundaries and broke down barriers to find shared understanding and connection rooted in a shared vision of social change for women across the globe.
I faced many challenges in my community while living alone without a husband, and I often felt ashamed of my situation. However, thanks to Engage and WISE, I now take pride in my independence and ability to support myself. I have learned to embrace my self-sufficiency, and I recognize the importance of asserting my rights.
Blen Yetnayet and group participant in a ‘theatre of the oppressed’ activity.
Meetaben Shrimali of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India shares her response to a group activity prompt, “what word comes to mind when you think of youth leadership?”
To learn more about Engage: Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship, visit coady.stfx.ca/engage