MADRE's General Brochure
War, Recovery, and Building Peace
True peace requires much more than an end to armed conflict. MADRE aims to build the conditions necessary to achieve peace by promoting the full range of women's human rights.
In Iraq, MADRE is responding to the explosion of gender-based violence unleashed by the US occupation. MADRE supports Iraq's first and only network of women's shelters and has co-founded the Underground Railroad for Iraqi Women, an escape and support network for women threatened with "honor killing." MADRE also supports Iraqi Art Action for Peace, through which Sunni and Shiite youth come together using poetry and visual arts to demand peace and women's rights, and build real-life alternatives to civil war.
In partnership with the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)
In Colombia, a MADRE-sponsored art-therapy program uses drama, painting, music, pottery, video, photography, and dance to help former child soldiers and other children who have been displaced by war. MADRE also supports a national campaign to combat displacement, economic exploitation, and violence against women. The campaign includes public art performances, community radio productions, and income-generating projects by and for women.
In partnership with Taller de Vida ("Workshop of Life") and LIMPAL
Women's Health, Sexual Rights, and Reproductive Rights
The strongest determinants of health, sexual rights, and reproductive rights are the social, political, and economic forces in our lives.
In Nicaragua, MADRE co-founded and continues to support the first women's health clinic on the North Atlantic Coast. The clinic is a primary source of healthcare for local communities. It combines traditional and Western medicine and offers reproductive health services.
In partnership with CADAMUC Clinic
In Palestine, MADRE works to protect and promote women's rights to reproductive and comprehensive healthcare, recognizing that Israeli occupation policies pose grave threats to public health and women's human rights.
In partnership with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society
Trade, Aid, and Economic Justice
MADRE's programs address the impact of macro-economic policies on women's lives and promote women's strategies for winning economic justice in their communities and in global arenas.
In Guatemala, MADRE supports women working in maquilas (sweatshops) through a neighborhood computer literacy and human rights training center, where women and young people learn job skills and strategies to defend their rights in the workplace. The center provides childcare and includes a play and reading corner that promotes children's literacy. The program also promotes community health, providing public water filters, family-planning trainings, PAP smears, and asthma treatment for women and families with no other source of healthcare.
In partnership with the Barcenas Maquila Workers' Committee
In Chiapas, Mexico, MADRE supports Indigenous women's efforts to create economic alternatives to the poverty and displacement caused by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through a women's cooperative that produces and markets traditional Indigenous textiles.
In partnership with K'inal Antzetik ("Women's Earth" in Tzeltal)
The Right to Food, Water, and Environmental Sustainability
Global climate change, coupled with unjust policies, poses a grave threat to the food security and water rights of millions of people. Women are primarily responsible for ensuring families' and communities' access to food and water, making climate change one of today's key women's human rights concerns.
In Nicaragua, MADRE combats hunger and helps ensure food security on the North Atlantic Coast by planting family food gardens. MADRE provides local families with chickens, vegetable seeds, and training in organic gardening and food preparation.
In partnership with Wangki Tangni ("Flower of the River" in Miskitu)
In Kenya, drought has killed livestock on which pastoralist Peoples depend. Worsening poverty caused by the drought has led to a sharp rise in forced child marriages and other human rights violations. MADRE is supporting the efforts of a women-led village to demand human rights, protect their livelihoods, and adapt to climate change by transitioning from herding cattle to raising camels, which require less water.
In partnership with the Umoja Uaso Women's Group, with technical support from the Indigenous Information Network
Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Resources
MADRE's earliest partnership in 1983 was with Indigenous women in Nicaragua. Today, Indigenous women are at the forefront of many social movements, offering a perspective that promotes environmental sustainability and democratic processes.
In Nicaragua, MADRE co-founded the Center for Indigenous Peoples' Autonomy and Development (known by its Spanish acronym, CADPI). CADPI promotes Indigenous Peoples' self-determination through a museum exhibiting work by Indigenous artists; a media center training young people in human-rights-oriented news and documentary production; a women's center; an intergenerational oral history program; community meeting spaces; and a state-of-the-art conference center offering seminars and study tours on Indigenous rights, autonomy, biodiversity, and sustainable development.
In partnership with the Center for Indigenous Peoples' Autonomy and Development (CADPI)
In Peru, MADRE supports a sculpture program for young Indigenous artists, which utilizes local materials and provides youth with opportunities for cultural affirmation and self-expression. Exhibits of their artwork help promote a new generation of Indigenous artists. The program also incorporates an educational exchange with mentors from a sculpture studio in the United States.
In partnership with CHIRAPAQ (the Center for Indigenous Cultures of Peru)
Confronting Violence against Women and Children
Despite important advances in law and social norms, the world remains gripped by an epidemic of violence whose primary targets are women and children. MADRE's programs confront multiple forms of violence, recognizing that freedom from violence is both a fundamental human right and a pre-condition to exercising other human rights.
In Peru, MADRE works to combat widespread sexualized and racialized violence against Afro-Peruvian women and youth. MADRE supports a community magazine featuring art and analysis by young people. The magazine is an advocacy tool to promote human rights, including sexual rights and reproductive rights, of young Afro-Peruvians, and combat discrimination and violence against Afro-Peruvian women.
In partnership with LUNDU, the Center of Afro-Peruvian Studies and Promotion
In Haiti, where rape has escalated sharply in recent years, MADRE supports healthcare and human rights advocacy programs by and for rape survivors. MADRE helps provide free, high-quality medical care and counseling for rape survivors—including peer support circles, through which women who have been raped provide social and psychological support to other survivors. MADRE also supports women's efforts to document human rights abuses and bring perpetrators to justice.
In partnership with KOFAVIV (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim; the Commission of Women Victims for Victims)
Emergency and Disaster Relief
One of MADRE's strengths is our ability to meet the urgent needs of women and families as we work toward a long-term vision of social justice. Women who are affected by disaster have a clear understanding of what kind of support they need, but too often, they lack the resources to meet those needs. That's why MADRE partners directly with local women's organizations in times of crisis. For example, MADRE has sent shipments of emergency relief to women and families in Darfur, Sudan (including food, clothing, medicines, and medical supplies) through our sister organization, Zenab for Women in Development.
To enhance our capacity to respond to crises, MADRE has launched an Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund. The Fund will enable us to act immediately and effectively when emergencies arise, bringing urgently needed resources directly to the women and families most in need.
Human Rights Advocacy
Putting International Law in Women's Hands and Bringing Women to the International Arena
MADRE works to make international law relevant and accountable to those it is meant to serve. MADRE brings women who work for social change at the community level into the process of creating and improving international law by providing them with training and leadership development opportunities. MADRE trainings enable our partners to infuse local human rights struggles with the power of international law and hold their governments accountable to international human rights standards. And the participation of community-based women's human rights activists in the international arena helps ensure that their priorities and perspectives are incorporated into international laws and processes.
MADRE works with Mulabi (Latin American Working Group on Sexual Rights), which organizes at the local, regional, and international level to advance the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and promote sexual rights for all.
MADRE is proud to host the International Indigenous Women's Forum (FIMI)
FIMI is a global network of Indigenous women leaders working within a human rights framework to secure the rights of Indigenous women within their communities and the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples in the international arena.
Get Informed
Public Education & Media Program
MADRE works to strengthen the capacity of our members and partners to shape policies that uphold human rights—in their communities, countries, and internationally. MADRE's publications, website, media program, speaking engagements, and travel opportunities communicate the real-life impact of policies on women and families around the world, inform people, and empower them to create change.
MADRE Delegations
MADRE's travel opportunities enable visitors to gain a first-hand understanding of human rights struggles and participate in an exchange of friendship and support with women and families from the communities of our sister organizations.
Get Involved
Direct aid
MADRE works to meet the immediate needs of our sister organizations by collecting donations and delivering medicines, health supplies, and educational materials. For example, MADRE sent a shipment of urgently needed antiparasitics to the Cuban Red Cross after Hurricane Dennis.
Sisters without Borders
MADRE facilitates an exchange of skills, experiences, and expertise among women from our sister organizations. Based on the priorities of our partners, MADRE provides technical assistance in areas including fundraising, media literacy, information technologies, program development and implementation, arts education, and health and human rights training, including HIV/AIDS-prevention workshops.
Volunteer opportunities and internships are also available in MADRE's New York office.