Since our inception in 2002, Project Empower has worked with more than 100 community-based groups across the KZN province and also in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo to develop and implement interventions that prevent HIV and violence against women. This work was supported by Oxfam Australia, Oxfam in South Africa and NOVIB amongst other donors.

Our work has also supported the formation of community-based activist women’s groups who have advocated for the realisation of their rights.. Eight women’s groups in eThekwini informal settlements and a further six in the rural community of Ndumo ensured that women’s health care needs were adequately addressed at primary health care clinics, that community policing forums addressed violence against women, and that women and their interests were represented on ward committees. This work was supported by Oxfam in South Africa, by the Canadian International Development Fund, and by the Joint Gender Fund.

From 2011 to 2013, Project Empower partnered with UKZN and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) to prevent violence against women and strengthening youth livelihoods in informal settlements. Together we developed Creating Futures, a livelihoods curriculum which we tested with young people alongside the existing gender transformative curriculum, Stepping Stones.