Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) is the only international charity supported by the WI movement.  

 

It has a uniquely down-to-earth approach,offering mutual support, friendship and practical help to its members. It funds group projects on literacy, health education,nutrition, home economics, agriculture, income generation, water and sanitation, leadership end entrepreneurship. It also funds individual scholarships in social and community welfare.The organisation has a membership of nine million in 75 countries worldwide.

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The WI is a Member Society of the ACWW, so every WI member is also an affiliated member of ACWW. ACWW is entirely dependent for income on annual dues paid by Member Societies and Individual Member donations. It receives no government funding.

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ACWW's Aims & Objectives are:

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• TO RAISE the standard of living of rural women and families through education, training and community development programmes.

• TO PROVIDE practical support to its members and help them set up income-generating schemes.

• TO GIVE  rural women a voice at international level through its consultative status with several UN agencies. In short, whether it is funding a project or a scholarship, or speaking out at a UN committee or conference for the basic human rights all women and families deserve, the work of ACWW may be summed up thus EMPOWERING WOMEN WORLDWIDE.

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ACWW Projects
Everything ACWW does is aimed at helping women to help their families and so improve nutrition and education. Requests for funding comes from the women themselves, nothing is imposed from outside, and the money is given directly to the women. The beauty of an ACWW project is that relatively small amounts of money are applied to small, specific local projects which can be closely monitored to ensure that help is given to that target group. Local monitoring ensures that only viable and worthwhile projects are approved and ongoing feedback confirms that the money has been spent correctly.

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We at Cam City can support the different projects run by the ACWW in one of two ways:

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1) Pennies for Friendship.

 

This is the method of support which is used by every Federation in the WI in England and Wales. We collect your small change in the "Pennies for friendship" box at every meeting. In April, we total up what we have collected over the year and that forms our contribution to the Federation donation. We hand it over at the Federation AGM. This year, the monies collected will be going towards the  Maternal and Reproductive Health projects group. The main aims of this group are to promote breast feeding, look at practices to reduce maternal mortality, the prevention of FGM and education and access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

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2) Recycling for Good Causes.

 

This is the method that individuals and organisations can use to donate to a chosen charity (as long as that charity has an account with this fundraising organisation!) Recycling for Good Causes takes 25% of the proceeds but the entire remaining 75% goes to the charity, to be allocated to different projects as they choose.

 
The fantastic part for us of supporting the ACWW in this way is that we can put all the stuff that has been cluttering up our lives to good use! In the same recycling sack, we can send off:

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• Jewellery & Watches (in any material even if damaged or broken)

• Currency – Any coins or banknotes, UK & foreign (even if out of circulation)

• Mobile Phones

• Cameras (old film, digital and video)

• Stamps (Loose, single, albums, first day covers, presentation packs, collections, postcard collections)

• Gadgets (Sat-Navs, Ipods, MP3 players, games consoles, games & accessories, Laptops & Tablet Computers).

Currently, we are working towards filling our first 30kg recycling sack. Please hand your donations to Margot Rowland - when full, she will have it collected from her home.

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Please note, we do not get feedback as to how much money we raise this way, just that the items are received and payment made to ACWW.