Women + Water CARE Fact Sheet

Spearheaded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Gap Inc., a global apparel retailer that sources products from about 800 facilities in 30 countries, the Women + Water Alliance (W+W Alliance) is a public-private partnership. The alliance aims to improve the health and well-being of women and communities touched by the apparel value chain.

In India, CARE is working with USAID and Gap Inc. as a partner of the W+W Alliance to improve and sustain the health and well-being of 200,000 women and their households in geographies with mills and cotton farming communities. The program is designed on the premise that using a locally contextualized version of the globally recognized P.A.C.E. (Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement) program of Gap Inc. will help enhance the knowledge, life skills and capacities of women from rural communities. This will also enable them to deploy this learning, and will lead women to significantly improve their access to and adoption of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices and to work towards the availability and sharing of WASH resources in a sustainable and equitable manner.

In the W+W Alliance, CARE joins Institute for Sustainable Communities, Water.org, the International Center for Research of Women (ICRW) and Institute for Development Impact (I4DI) as an implementing partner responsible for Gap Inc.'s P.A.C.E. roll out and development of cadres of female Gap Inc.'s P.A.C.E. Champions and Male Champions.