Service Appreciation Grants
The Women’s Wisdom: Women in Action Service Appreciation Grants program, established by Dr. Nahid Angha, Founder of the Sufi Women Organization, is dedicated to recognizing and supporting the impactful work of a woman or women-led organization in rural communities. Nominations for honorees are solicited and invited solely by the Women in Action program, and a panel of volunteer judges carefully reviews each submission. Grant recipients are announced annually in July, with awards ranging from $500-$1000.
The Service Appreciation Grants recognize and support individuals and organizations that have demonstrated outstanding commitment to improving the quality of life for women through impactful social programs. Grants focus on the following key areas:
Equity: Promoting gender equality in both public and private sectors and expanding employment opportunities for women.
Healthcare: Ensuring the physical, mental and environmental well-being of women and girls.
Education: Advancing women’s and girls’ right to access education.
Human Rights: Advocating for the reduction of poverty among women, including the development of effective systems for conflict resolution and social justice.
The four key focus areas of the SWO Service Appreciation Grants are designed to foster systemic change in support of the global advancement of women. These grants extend far beyond providing financial assistance to individual recipients; they serve as catalysts for transformative journeys that create lasting and rippling impacts in the lives of the women and their communities.
Gender Equity
Equity Impact Summary: Grantees’ projects have benefited over 300 women and girls, promoting gender equity, advocating for marginalized voices, and fostering environmental and social justice.
Equity / Education (Honoree 2024, 2025)
Kampala, Uganda
A project to support and promote women’s property rights and girls’ education in the two districts of Mayuge and Jinja in Kampala, Uganda. To address these challenges, the project includes making interventions of Capacity Building for Community Facilitators (volunteers) in legal processes, human rights advocacy, mediation, reporting, and communication skills to effectively address women and girls’ rights violations and promote legal literacy. To monitor progress and assess the impact of these interventions and the project as a whole, periodic field visits are conducted in the project areas within the two targeted districts of Mayuge and Jinja.
Equity / Human Rights (Honoree 2019, 2021–2025)
Kenya
This project works with the Eshirandala Mirembe and Bukhakhala Wekhonye Women’s groups to address poverty and wide-spread gender-based violence. Its objectives are to strengthen the role of the women in their communities through sustainable economic empowerment activities. The groups have strategically realigned their focus toward table banking, sugarcane and potato farming, tree planting, improved sanitation, financial literacy, and economic resilience, while also ensuring that children in their families – especially girls – remain in school. These core initiatives have strengthened the two women’s groups, made up of over 40 women and their families, in their ongoing journey toward economic independence, environmental stewardship, and gender-based violence prevention, thereby breaking the cycle of poverty and inequality.
Gender Equity and Justice
Dabbouriya, Galilee
The Dabbouriya Village Forum of Women is a committee of 15 women within a wider community who work on issues of social wellbeing and equality in order to promote the status of the community’s women. Volunteers in Jenin help women facing very difficult conditions given military occupation and its impact on communities. The forum has created an environment for compassionate listening by holding stress-related exercise workshops giving direct and immediate help for the women most in need. The 2018 WWWA grant has benefited 45 women and in 2019 benefited 55 women.
Equity (Honoree 2024)
Denan Project, Ethiopia
A micro loan program through the Denan Project, whose volunteer members secure necessary resources for highly disadvantaged people. This microloan is for a group of 10 women who help impoverished communities become self-sustainable with resources to provide health care, education, and other critical assistance.
Healthcare Projects
Healthcare Impact Summary: Grantees have reported improvement for over 350 women and girls, particularly in underserved populations, through expanded access to essential services, preventative care, and mental health support.
Health and Nutrition (Honoree 2022, 2023)
Ghana
The Yendi Project is a grassroots project that serves women in the Ghanaian northern region (Dagomba, Mamprusi, and Konkomba areas) where bread is a staple food, but is scarce and expensive in these rural areas. The decreased access to bread is an ongoing issue, and girls walk miles to buy daily bread for the village. This initiative teaches baking skills by holding classes and helping with the construction of ovens in the villages for selected girls and women. 12 Women and girls benefited from the WWWA Grant in the 4-day classes. The project has the potential to nutritionally affect the lives of many people and to be transformative for the people of the villages around Yendi town.
“The SWO Service Appreciation Grant has been applied to many areas of our bread making training program,
contributing to the empowerment of 40 women in rural Northern Ghana. We, at The Yendi Project,
sincerely appreciate the generous support of the Sufi Women’s Organization. We are making a difference.”
– Yendi Project
Mental Health Support (Honoree 2021, 2022)
Kenya
Through the Shalom Centre for Counseling and Development, a Kenyan NGO that provides five-day healing circle meetings for young, affected women in the Chelebei, Chongeiwo location of Mt. Elgon, this grantee is responding to relational, structural, and traumatic needs of women in communities affected by violent conflicts. These women are identified and mobilized by a peace mother and a member of the local peace committee. The WWWA grants awarded benefited 40 participants for 2021 and 2022 in each of the healing circles most affected from their target group. These five-day healing circle meetings create and hold trusted and safe spaces for these women to become aware of their dark traumatizing past, and to confront and process it as they embark on their healing journey.
Patient Recovery and Heath Equity
Rwanda
The aim of this project was to help vulnerable patients in public hospitals by providing food, hygienic products and other services, with the goal to accelerate the patient recovery process, preserve patient dignity, and promote equity. This grantee was also e recipient of the Young African Women Leaders Forum Award, a CYRWA (Celebrating Young Rwandan Achievers) awardee. Sufi Women Organization grants helped to provide basic needs, food and water to patients in one of Rwanda’s hospitals.
Healthcare Grantee: “With the grant, we were able to provide healthcare for
over 200 individuals in rural areas where access to care was previously non-existent.”
Education Projects
Education Impact Summary: SWO grants have aided grantees in implementing more programs that improve educational outcomes in their communities, providing tutoring and holistic support to over 670 underserved children and adults.
Human Rights / Education (Honoree 2018, 2023–2025)
Portugal
This initiative that helps African immigrant families and children combat poverty, particularly focusing on African young girls, while also developing volunteer activities and education within the community to care for small children while their mothers attend literacy classes. In 2025, this organization has seen a significant increase in demand from young mothers, which led to redirection of their work toward implementing initiatives in capacity building and positive parenting, creative woodworking workshops, dance sessions, recreational and educational games, empowerment activities, and awareness sessions on gender-based and domestic violence. This work has been essential in driving meaningful and lasting change in the lives of children, youth, and families.
“The grants have been extremely useful in working with 45 young African mothers and children
in parenting training. We now plan to work with 20 young people holding healing and
informational sessions on bullying prevention, dating violence, promoting
healthy and responsible sexuality, women’s health care, and prevention of addictive behaviors.”
– Grantee, Portugal
Education
South Sudan
This grantee has a passion and strong work ethic that moved her to the social workspace where she serves rural communities to uplift and empower HIV positive women and children who have been affected by the protracted war in South Sudan. WWWA grants have helped her to support women through adult education and enroll girls to join schools that provide vocational training for girls who have gone through war trauma, including rape. She founded Wipe My Tears Foundation (WTF) together with a diverse group of other rural women from different ethnicities and religions. These are women who have hope in change and have experienced different challenging situations during and after war.
Education
Nigeria
This grantee courageously promotes and advocates for displaced women and children as a result of insurgency in the Borno state. With help of the Sufi Women Organizations’s WWWA grant, she founded a free school, which began with 20 students in 2016 and grew to benefit 663 women and children. She has played a vital role in mobilizing the community to learn through education and promoting good nutrition, hygiene, and awareness of sexual abuse.
Education (Honoree 2025)
Borno State, Nigeria
Rihabul Aulad Integrated Islamic School serves orphans, women, and underserved communities with a focus on education, continuing to be a transformative force in their lives. 300 women have successfully been trained across various skill acquisition programs, empowering them with the tools they need to become self-reliant and economically active in catering services, tailoring and sewing, handmade shoe production, and henna design – all of which help the women start their own businesses. Many of the women have begun producing and selling within their neighborhoods, gradually building up confidence and financial independence, and becoming role models for others.
Educational Impact Grantee: “This grant has allowed us to develop mentorship programs
that are closing the achievement gap in our village schools.”
Human Rights Projects
Human Rights Impact Summary: With the support of SWO grants, over 200 individuals benefited from initiatives focused on advancing human rights, emphasizing poverty reduction, women’s empowerment, and sustainable development.
Human Rights / Equity / Education (Honoree 2024, 2025)
Kibera, Nairobi
Polycom Girls began as a self-help group by young women to protect their daughters from sexual manipulation and violence while also empowering themselves economically. The older generation supported this effort by “passing the baton” to younger women and promoting cross-generational learning. Over time, this initiative grew into the launching of a Triple-Tier Mentorship Plan that unites voices from across generations in deep dialogue. These dialogues focus on empowerment through storytelling, cross-learning on African identity, peacebuilding, and buildingmentorship bridges.
Human Rights / Healthcare (Honoree 2023, 2024, 2025)
Malta
The Migrant Women’s Association Malta (MWAM) successfully provides social support and immediate basic needs to asylum-seeking and refugee women and their families in Malta. More than 25% of these women are victims of sexual or gender-based violence (SGBV) and are struggling to overcome poverty. MWAM assists women and families with children 1 to 13 years, including both girls and boys, as well as children with disabilities. The grant has helped enable them to organize childcare services during various activities and visits to open centers that host women and families in the asylum-seeking process. During these activities, the children’s needs and areas for improvement are assessed.
Equity / Human Rights
Sierra Leone
The Peace Mothers provide village women opportunities to come together to support each other and work together for the healing and development of their communities. The Peace Mothers platform provides a safe space for leadership development capacities through training and mentorship to actively participate in peacebuilding decision-making with increased self-esteem, strength and amplified voices. Their work also involves a farming and revolving loan scheme, which is critical for women’s economic empowerment in their respective communities.
Human Rights
Jerusalem
This grantee has been Director General of the Ministry of Education. She believes that through education women can change their lives, and that young men must be educated in order to change society toward the better. The WWWA grant awarded was used to provide retreats to help a great number of women to learn to express their problems, their challenges and feelings through writing.
With every grant, we plant seeds of hope,
nurturing the future of communities and the dignity of every human soul.
Nominations
Thank you for your interest in our grant nomination process. To learn more about what we fund and support, please review the overview above. We accept nominations by invitation only. For any additional questions please contact the International Association of Sufism.
There is a 2 step nomination process. Step one (1) is to complete the general nomination.
