ATLANTA (March 8, 2021) — The Carter Center today launched the Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign, a groundbreaking global effort to help ensure that women can seek and receive information from their governments.
Inform Women, Transform Lives consists of three major elements—raising awareness about women’s right to access public information; working with the campaign’s 13 inaugural cities to help them get information to women about city services that could benefit them; and advocating for politicians and policymakers to build women’s access to information into national and international laws and regulations.
“We want to encourage a global conversation about women’s right to information and all the ways that information can benefit not only women, but entire families and communities,” said the Carter Center’s CEO, Paige Alexander. “One of the best ways to demonstrate that is at the city level, because cities offer so many crucial services and make decisions that have a major impact on people’s everyday lives.”
Cities participating in the inaugural campaign are: Atlanta, Georgia; Amman, Jordan; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cape Town, South Africa; Chicago, Illinois; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Dhaka North, Bangladesh; Dublin, Ireland; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Kampala, Uganda; Lima, Peru; Monrovia, Liberia; and São Paulo, Brazil.
Each city has chosen its own focus. For example:
· Guatemala City is promoting its municipal women’s centers, which offer women everything from job training to nutrition classes to legal and psychological services.
· Atlanta is promoting ATL311, a hotline for making all non-emergency requests, and ATLStrong.org, a COVID-19-response website, as ways to connect women with critical city services that can help alleviate the negative impacts of the pandemic.
· Amman is promoting training to help women develop in-home businesses making food or crafts, get licenses for those businesses, and find market space to sell their wares.
· Monrovia is promoting a program aimed at improving solid waste disposal in slum communities and giving women the opportunity to start small businesses collecting garbage.
· Colombo is developing and promoting a program to help keep women safer on public transportation.
· Chicago is promoting its City Key, a free government ID that also unlocks a variety of city services.
“If we are not intentional about getting information to women, they often are excluded from its benefits,” said Laura Neuman, director of the Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program and leader of the Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign. “Our 13 cities have put a lot of thought into what services they provide that women are not currently accessing. They will be using creative tools to reach women and documenting the impact that information has.”
In addition, she said, the Center will make small grants to civil society organizations in each of the cities to help fund projects that connect women with information.
Inform Women, Transform Lives will run through International Right to Know Day on Sept. 28. The first 90-second animated video for the campaign can be found here. More information about the campaign and the Carter Center’s efforts to help women access information is available at cartercenter.org/info4women.
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Contact: In Atlanta, Soyia Ellison, soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org
Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.
A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.
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