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See profileBeyond SDG 5: How Every Goal Shapes the Future for Women and Girls
Celebrating the International Women's Day with the Impact Accelerator Program
Celebrating the International Women’s Day with the Impact Accelerator Program – Analytics for a Better World | Britt van Veggel | This International Women’s Day, we reflected together with the organizations in the ABW Impact Accelerator Program on the connecting thread of impact that they are advancing through their work — namely, how tackling challenges […]
This International Women’s Day, we reflected together with the organizations in the ABW Impact Accelerator Program on the connecting thread of impact that they are advancing through their work — namely, how tackling challenges in health, sustainable mobility, education, water access, and historical information preservation also means advancing gender equality. When enhancing progress on the other Sustainable Development Goals, the impact on SDG 5, Gender Equality, is rarely incidental. Women make up the majority of frontline health workers, yet often lack access to the appropriate information. Women and girls bear a disproportionate share of the barriers to education. Often, having to take on the roles of caregivers, women and girls spend hours each day collecting water that could be spent in classrooms or building livelihoods. And transport systems built around private vehicles quietly disadvantage those who rely on shared and public options most. Across different sectors and geographies, the organizations in our program are demonstrating that progress on the SDGs is inseparable from progress on SDG 5, and the voices below show exactly how.
Elizabeth Talatu Williams, Infolep & InfoNTD Coordinator, shared how the InfoNTD chatbot solution, which they are co-creating with OMP, directly contributes to SDG 5 (Gender Equality) by empowering health workers, a workforce that is predominantly female globally. Talatu Williams said:
According to the World Health Organization, women make up around 67 % of the health and care workforce worldwide, highlighting their central role in delivering health services and supporting community wellbeing. However, many women frontline workers in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) face challenges accessing timely, practical, and context-specific health information due to limitations in current search and resource systems. The InfoNTD chatbot addresses these gaps by providing instant, simple, summarized, personalized, and multilingual information, enabling women health workers, including nurses, community health workers, and caregivers to better identify, diagnose, and treat neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). By improving access to knowledge and decision support tools, the InfoNTD chatbot helps strengthen women’s professional capacity, leadership, and influence in health systems, advancing greater gender equality in both practice and outcomes.
Theresa Dennen, Performance and Data Analyst at the Fleet Forum Association, explains how the Interagency Mobility Plan Project, co-developed with ORTEC, supports gender equality by gearing the humanitarian sector towards sustainable transport. Dennen elaborated that
Evidence from the World Bank shows that women disproportionately face constraints in mobility, including affordability, safety, and availability, and are more reliant on shared and public transport than men. The current car-centric system often reinforces inequality by privileging those able to afford access to private vehicles.
By promoting public transport, ride-sharing, and active mobility, our project challenges the current model in place within humanitarian operations. It reduces reliance on individual vehicle use, improves cost efficiency, and supports safer, more coordinated movement planning. In doing so, it aligns operational practice with sustainability commitments, including gender equality. By supporting inclusive and sustainable transport systems within their own operations, humanitarian organisations can help reduce mobility inequalities, may they be internal or in the countries where they operate.
Dennis Munai, Project Manager for AMREF Health Africa Kenya, illustrated the daily reality of rural Kenya, where women and girls face heavy daily treks for water, a reality that steals their futures. Munai said:
Under a scorching sun, they trek over 6 miles of treacherous terrain, balancing the crushing weight of a 20-litre jerrycan on their backs, not just once, but twice a day. This gruelling labour doesn’t just cause physical strain; it forces a heartbreaking choice: the choice between survival, productive opportunities and/or an education.
Through the Impact Accelerator, we seek to provide access to this basic fundamental right. By using AI and data science to see through the earth and pinpoint high-potential groundwater, we are bringing safe water closer to the doorstep. This technology reclaims thousands of lost hours previously spent on dusty trails. For a young girl, this means the difference between dropping out and staying in school to chase her dreams. For women, it means the freedom to lead and thrive in their communities. We are using the power of data to provide a platform for the next generation of Kenyan women and girls to spend their time in classrooms and the boardrooms, not on the long road to a distant contaminated water source.
Hira Shahid, Learning Design Expert at Teach the World Foundation, discussed how the Foundation runs accelerated digital learning micro-schools to sustainably educate out-of-school children in Pakistan’s underserved communities. Shahid shared that:
Our project under the Impact Accelerator Program focuses on developing a comprehensive dashboard that captures and monitors a multitude of indicators pertaining to Micro-school quality. These include student engagement, learning outcomes, facilitator reliability, digital functionality, community and parental involvement, and school safety.
While illiteracy is altogether a pressing crisis, in many instances the barriers to literacy disproportionately affect girls and women, evident in the fact that roughly 52% of Pakistan’s out of school population constitutes girls.
By combining these indicators into a structured dashboard, the project helps identify barriers that may particularly affect girls’ inclusion in education. Program teams can therefore design and improve interventions more effectively at the school and community levels. This also ensures that girls who have historically been excluded from education are not merely a statistic in enrollment numbers but can sustainably engage in and achieve foundational literacy and numeracy. In this way, through more transparent and holistic quality-monitoring systems, the project contributes considerably to advancing gender equality.
Anne-Fleur Dijkhorst, PhD Candidate in Supply Chain Management at Rotterdam School of Managament also concurred:
Through the dashboard, we can not only monitor quality on a school level but also zoom in on student-level analytics to find differences between male and female students on all these aspects. If there are any major differences in enrolment, attendance, and performance improvement between male and female students, TTWF can address these and provide interventions to ensure gender-equal access to learning opportunities. In this way, we can make sure that as many students as possible are integrated into the education system and have more possibilities for a bright future.
Although all of the non-profit organizations involved in the Impact Accelerator Program work towards advancing progress towards different SDGs, their stories show how advancing impact for one SDG can always meaningfully influence the others, as they are strongly interconnected. Moreover, meaningful progress on the SDGs cannot be achieved without centering the needs, voices, and opportunities of women and girls. As Britt van Veggel, Selection Committee Member for the Program, put it:
In many contexts, women are more marginalized than men, so improving access to essential resources often benefits women most. Climate-related disasters disproportionately affect women, meaning the Fleet Forum’s work for efficient mobility will improve women’s health and safety. Amref’s efforts to improve water access are especially important, as women often bear responsibility for collecting water. InfoNTD strengthens knowledge on tropical diseases, which women are more exposed to due to social norms and are more vulnerable to given their impact on reproductive organs and pregnancies. Expanding education through TTWF can empower women by increasing independence, freedom and opportunity. Finally, Archivi can inspire women worldwide by preserving and sharing stories of Nigerian women who fought for rights, justice, and social change, such as Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, and Alimotu Pelewura who resisted British colonial taxation of women traders and other forms of exploitation, contributing to Nigeria’s independence, or Hajia Gambo who fought against forced marriage, child labour, and the exclusion of women from political life.
From water and transport to health information, education, and historical memory, the organizations in this program are proving that gender equality is a goal that can only be achieved if everyone across the sectors meaningfully contributes towards it. Through the Impact Accelerator Program, we are proud to support this work, and we look forward to continuing to build a program where innovation and inclusion, equity, and diversity contribute to a future of mutual growth.
