Umurage Growth’s Model of Success

Umurage Growth's model for women-led ventures was created in partnership with Global Grassroots. Our two-year Academy for Conscious Social Change (The Academy) includes a unique blend of training, high-engagement support, and seed funding. The Academy's curriculum also includes trauma-informed mind-body practices that support well-being and confidence while inviting women to explore deep change from the inside out.

The Academy also serves as an incubator that helps teams of women design every aspect of a non-profit organization that constructs and operates a community water enterprise and additional social impact projects. Here, we honor women's wisdom and leadership instincts by encouraging teams to generate their own solutions.

The Academy is the foundation of our Women & Water Infrastructure Initiative which usually involves extending a pipeline to a water access point in the middle of a village, which then sells water at or below market rates (some even reduced per-liter prices by 90%). Water sales cover all operating expenses, maintenance, and future repairs. Each Women & Water team operates its venture as a non-profit organization, incorporating other valuable training, services, and advocacy programs.

In addition to delivering clean drinking water to an average of 3000 people, each non-profit solution radically improves community health, women's safety, and gender relations; eliminates violence and exploitation associated with collection; ensures girls attend school on time; fosters women's leadership and economic opportunities; and generates an ongoing source of revenue for the women to reinvest in their community - all at an average cost of just $8 per beneficiary. Over time, water ventures become sustainable social innovation hubs for women's rights. Our experience has shown that one successful experience as a change agent is quickly followed by expansion, where women take on other pressing issues in their communities. Not only do women have more courage, but they also have greater access to the resources to be change-makers.  In every case, ventures catalyze women's empowerment, community health, education, economic opportunity, and children's well-being.

Click here to learn more about the Academy for Conscious Social Change and the four phases, 24-month program.