EMPOWER Project Impact Report

The EMPOWER project contributes to achieving the SDGs, specifically Goals 1 (No Poverty), 4 (Quality Education), 5 (Gender Equality), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Rooted in the principles of the Islamic Gender Justice Declaration, the project integrates faith perspectives into gender justice and child protection advocacy, recognising the influential role of religious leaders in shaping community attitudes and behaviours.

The primary aim of EMPOWER is to challenge harmful social practices, such as GBV, that perpetuate gender inequality by creating community-based gender justice champions who will promote transformative change through advocating for behavioural shifts at the local level and influencing policy changes at both local and national levels. The project focuses on grassroots capacity building and facilitation, ensuring that faith-based responses to gender injustice at the community level are both effective and sustainable. It further advocates for legal systems, including religious and customary laws, to recognise, prevent, and adequately address gender injustice. To achieve this, the project takes an innovative and faith-based approach to gender justice and child protection that combines World Vision’s Channels of Hope advocacy training with child protection methodology to extensively mobilise and engage faith leaders and invest in the development of female faith scholarship that contributes to faith literacy. The research component of the project, which includes this report, helps to ensure that evidence-based advocacy informs behavioural and policy changes to promote gender justice.