Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment through Digital Literacy
Participants with their certificates of completion from Peace Corps/Liberia's training event.
Since their inception, USAID and the Peace Corps have recognized that expanding opportunities for women can transform women’s futures and those of their families, communities, and countries. Increasingly, opportunities for women to advance economically are dependent upon or facilitated by digital literacy skills and access to and knowledge of digital technology. Expanding women’s digital skills and access to technology is a strategic imperative that has the power to spur economic growth, improve development outcomes, and lift millions out of poverty. Together, USAID and the Peace Corps are empowering women through strategic investments in resources and skills development. Programs like the Women’s Economic Empowerment through Digital Literacy (WEE-DL) Initiative help women develop and use their increased skills to succeed and improve their economic futures.
Amplifying Investments in Technical Skills Development
Globally, approximately 244 million more men than women were using the Internet in 2023. The disparity is especially acute across Africa, where International Telecommunication Union data show that only three in ten women use the Internet. One of the many unfortunate results of this digital gender gap is that it undermines women’s full participation in the 21st century economy. Promoting gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment are fundamental for the realization of human rights and are key to effective and sustainable development outcomes.
Recognizing the importance of women’s access to digital skills and technologies, the United States government has increased its support of women’s economic empowerment by promoting programs such as the Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund, managed by USAID. Given the unique value-add position of the Peace Corps, USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub (GenDev) was eager to explore how the Peace Corps could leverage GEEA funds. The agencies created a new opportunity for collaboration: the USAID-Peace Corps Global Interagency Agreement, a mechanism for funding partnerships between the two Agencies that facilitates sharing of knowledge and technical expertise to strengthen both Agencies’ work.
Utilizing the Global Agreement and the GEEA Fund, GenDev Hub provided the Peace Corps with funds to support activities that prioritize increasing women’s digital literacy skills, resulting in the WEE-DL Initiative. Launched in April 2022, the WEE-DL Initiative enables the Peace Corps to invest in transformative knowledge resources and training materials that will last for years beyond the initial partnership and will be used by Peace Corps posts and Volunteers around the world. In 2024, following success in the first year and a half of the WEE-DL Initiative, USAID’s Innovation, Technology, and Research Bureau used the Global Agreement to establish Digital Literacy for Development, the Bureau’s own collaboration with the Peace Corps. This second collaboration will help more Peace Corps posts access digital literacy-focused opportunities, regardless of gender focus.
Long-term, the primary objective of these joint efforts between USAID and the Peace Corps is to help women and communities develop and use increased digital literacy skills to advance their own economic empowerment. To that end, with support from this funding, Peace Corps staff are creating digital literacy resources to train both Peace Corps Volunteers and members of the communities where Volunteers serve. Currently, women across 28 countries in all five USAID regions can take advantage of these training resources through participating Peace Corps posts to gain skills to support and advance their families, communities, and livelihoods.
Learn more below about how the WEE-DL Initiative is helping equip communities across Liberia and Moldova.
Strengthening Rural Small Businesses through Digital Literacy
In Liberia, Peace Corps Volunteers often partner with local communities on gender equality and women’s empowerment projects. Through these relationships and activities, both financial literacy and digital financial services emerged as community priorities to benefit female small business owners and women’s community-based organizations in rural areas.
With the support of the USAID-Peace Corps collaboration at the headquarters level, Peace Corps/Liberia developed a WEE-DL Training Manual to be used in combination with existing training materials. This new resource addresses best practices for using social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, to promote a business, utilize mobile money, and access digital financial resources. Additionally, instruction was complemented by the establishment of a community of practice to support skills development.
Local experts developed the project materials and conducted a training of trainers to prepare Peace Corps/Liberia staff and 12 Peace Corps Volunteers to replicate the training for future Volunteers and community members. Through a subsequent training, 45 women representing community-based women’s organizations expanded their digital literacy skills. Continued funding through WEE-DL is equipping Peace Corps/Liberia to update their training materials based on lessons learned and to expand access in the future.
Empowering Nonprofit Leaders to Lead Local Development
In February 2023, women leaders from nonprofit organizations around Moldova joined a three-day digital skills training offered by the Peace Corps post through their participation in the WEE-DL initiative. The training, created in partnership with Future Classroom Lab, a digital education project supported by Moldova’s Ministry of Education, focused on supporting women’s professional growth by sharpening their digital skills for community collaboration, budgeting, and graphic design. Sessions covered Google Workspace, including Gmail, Calendar, Sheets for budgeting, and Drive for collaboration, in addition to Canva for graphic design. Before the training, one woman shared her excitement of how this knowledge could help advance her skills and career: “I will be able to create a database of the products my company sells, which will help me become more organized and efficient.”
The skills training both equipped Moldovan women to lead local development and support locally led development principles, such as community listening. One participant shared that the training “will allow us to involve more people in our community development projects – people will be able to comment on our proposals and add their ideas.”
Following a highly successful initial session, and in response to the overwhelming interest (84 women applied for 27 spots), Peace Corps/Moldova conducted a second training. These 54 newly trained women then organized and led their own information sessions on the digital skills they learned, reaching an additional 151 women.
As follow up, women who participated in the digital skills training also received personalized mentoring in the following months. This continued investment from the WEE-DL Initiative is expanding digital access and women’s economic opportunities in a meaningful way, amplifying the effect of the initial sessions. As one woman shared, “the skills developed in this training will help me grow professionally, collaborate more effectively with my colleagues, be more productive ... and access new opportunities.”
