Project Grants - Who We Are - Women's Inter-Church Council of Canada

Generous donations made through the World Day of Prayer have enabled WICC, the Canadian coordinator, to fund a variety of programs and initiatives in Canada and around the world which speak to the Council’s four areas of focus and priority: justice, women’s issues, ecumenism and the growth of women’s spirituality.

In fact, we are pleased to report that well over half a million dollars has been granted by WICC to 160 organizations for projects that benefit women and children around the world and here in Canada from WDP offerings over the past 6 years. To learn more about our WDP 2010 grant recipients click here.

Grant applications are to be received in our office no later than March 1st of each year.

From the least coins collected around the world, more than $1 million has been granted by the International Committee of the Fellowship of the Least Coin (ICFLC) to projects that benefit women and children around the world. Close to $200,000 in FLC offerings in Canada over the past 7 years has been contributed to the global FLC fund by WICC. Grants are issued to a number of project areas: literacy, health, social justice, education, leadership development and disaster relief. Click here to learn more about the 2010 FLC grant recipients.

As WICC is the coordinator of the Fellowship of the Least Coin program in Canada, requests for FLC grants are made thorough our office. For additional information, contact our office directly.

Gifts in Action – WICC Project Highlight

A Community caring for Itself

Help Lesotho

Girls As Agents for Change in Lesotho

Help Lesotho is a registered charity working in Lesotho to support schools and more than 9,000 beneficiary orphans, vulnerable children, grandmothers and youth in Leribe, Thaba Tseka and Butha Buthe. Gender equity and HIV/AIDS prevention, counseling and testing are key components to all Help Lesotho’s work. Help Lesotho identifies and builds young leaders to make a difference in their communities. Working with many local partners, Help Lesotho has its office in Hlotse, Leribe and works in ten communities.

The objectives of Help Lesotho's current project include:

Fostering hope and motivation in the children, a major component of which is achieved by enabling children to stay in school;
Twinning schools and build one-on-one relationships between supporting communities and the people of Lesotho;
Developing simple, low-cost, accountable, locally based and championed projects in Lesotho;
Promoting HIV/AIDS awareness among youth in Lesotho;
Supporting Lesotho teachers and schools with programs, resources, and volunteers; and
Developing leadership and a sense of civic responsibility among Lesotho youth.

Help Lesotho has developed a range of effective leadership forums and strategies for working with young women from the remote areas of the country. These funds strengthen and expand the reach to young girls who are vulnerable to the disease, discrimination and abuse.

Each beneficiary has his or her own story. Each one has grief and suffering beyond our imagination. Their conditions vary, from child-headed households to orphans living with their grandmothers, to vulnerable children who live with parents who are either ill or in other ways unable to help them as they grow.

In less than five years, Help Lesotho has provided 16,000 youth with HIV/AIDS and gender equity education; it has 15 partner schools and over 9,000 orphans, grandmothers and youth benefiting from its programs. Help Lesotho has provided essential support to 500 grandmothers, sponsored over 1500 annual school fees, facilitated 7,000 children, youth and teachers to test for HIV and trained hundreds of orphans each year in leadership, gender equity and HIV/AIDS. It has clothed thousands of orphans with uniforms and shoes, hosted approximately 1,000 children at its annual six-day leadership camps and 200 to three-day girls’ conferences. The WICC funds started the annual ‘Step Up and Speak Out’ Young Women’s Conferences. In 2008 alone, due to the generosity of donors, Help Lesotho rebuilt one primary school, built a dorm for 100 girls, constructed a hall for a school and community, completed a centre for thousands of villagers and rental units for an orphanage, built countless latrines and made innumerable repairs to grandmother huts and schools. Help Lesotho has engaged more than 75,000 people internationally, including 80 schools, churches of five denominations, organizations and individuals.

The organization profiled above has received project funding from WICC grants funded by money donated to the World Day of Prayer. For more information on these projects, click here.