What is The Grandmother Project?
The Grandmother Project is a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) that was officially recognized in the U.S. in 2004 and in Italy in 2007. GMP was established by Judi Aubel with support from a group of about twenty people, both from industrialized and developing countries, who are committed to promoting the health and development of poor communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. (See Board and Advisory Group members).
The approaches being promoted by GMP are based on work that was started in 1997, prior to the creation of the organization, and when Aubel was working for different NGOs to develop the grandmother-inclusive strategies. ( Grandmother-inclusive strategies are those that explicitly and actively involve grandmothers as active resource persons for their communities.)
Starting in 1997 in Laos, later in central Senegal and Mali, and more recently in Uzbekistan, Albania and southern Senegal, experiences involving senior women in community efforts to improve the health and well-being of women and children have consistently demonstrated the relevance of including them in these efforts. Each of the project experiences (described below) dealt with different issues related to women and children's health and well-being. But the common element in each of them was that grandmothers were given a central role, unlike many programs that exclude them.
Gaining support for grandmother-inclusive health promotion strategies has been a gradual process given the negative biases against grandmothers on the part of many development organizations.
Objectives
Our program objectives are to:
- Document grandmothers' multi-faceted role in early childhood development, education and children and women's health and well-being in different non-western societies
- Raise awareness and advocate for grandmothers to be included in development programs given their critical role as teachers of younger generations and as guardians of cultural values and traditions
- Provide expert support to community-level projects in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to integrate grandmothers into family health, education and development strategies
- Strengthen the capacity of development organizations and their staff to involve grandmothers as partners in community health and development projects through the use of participatory adult education methods
- Develop guidelines and tools for incorporating grandmothers into programs that promote the health, education and development of women and children
- Evaluate alternative approaches for integrating grandmothers into health and development programs in order to identify the more effective strategies and lessons learned
Services
The Grandmother Project will provide:
- tools for analyzing and documenting grandmothers' influence and roles in family and community
- technical assistance to development organizations interested in integrating proven grandmother-inclusive strategies and participatory adult education techniques into their programs
- training for health and education development workers to strengthen their skills for involving grandmothers as partners and resource persons in community programs
- methods and tools to help program managers to plan and implement grandmother-inclusive interventions.
How we work
The GMP aims to identify local non-governmental or governmental organizations that are interested in incorporating grandmothers into their community programs. Joint project proposals are developed and funding is sought for such efforts. At the present time GMP does not have resources that can be given to local organizations to carry out such programs.