American Jewish World Service

Programs division: the programs division (pd) oversees and implements ajws's international grantmaking. In fy2024, ajws awarded 639 grants to 409 human rights organizations in 17 countries working to defend civil and political rights, advance sexual health and rights, protect land and water rights and promote climate justice, and respond to disasters. In fy2024, ajws also supported an additional 23 grantees in 12 countries via a donor-advised fund. In fy 2024, ajws funded partners in uganda impacted by the 2023 anti-homosexuality act. We also supported partners in kenya to prevent the passage of a similar law in that country. (see sch. O)in india, kenya, and the dominican republic ajws funded movements to champion the rights of adolescent girls and young women to self-determination, including their right to resist early and child marriage through a grant that ended on april 30, 2024. The programs division also made meaningful new investments in supporting youth-and women-led organizations defending land and water rights and advocating for climate justice in countries like kenya, el salvador, and india. This included funding emerging national level networks and coalitions. In the area of civil and political rights, ajws funded partners seeking to promote democratic ideals and advance justice. This support ranged from funding collectives of mothers searching for their disappeared loved ones in mexico to community organizations working toward the implementation of free and fair elections in senegal, guatemala and the democratic republic of the congo.the division also provided humanitarian response support to partners facing natural disasters or public health emergency crises in the countries where we work. Grant support was allocated to immediate response and preparedness and mitigation efforts. Specific humanitarian response efforts included support for myanmar in response to cyclone mocha and floods in burma and haiti. Ajws's advocacy efforts prioritized bringing accountability to those who violated rule of law and human rights in haiti and elsewhere. Ajws also emphasized the importance of robust foreign assistance funding and human rights regulations and policies in the u.s. Global health funding, as well as advancing sexual health and rights for lgbtqi+ people, women, and girls throughout u.s. foreign aid policy.finally, the programs division collaborated with the strategic learning, research and evaluation division to monitor and evaluate the progress of ajws's grantees using thematic and regional strategies and collaborative multi-year benchmarks.

Strategic learning, research and evaluation (slre): the strategic learning, research and evaluation division is responsible for yielding new insights that can be used to strategically improve ajws's work to advance human rights. Slre guides ongoing strategy management and investigates key questions about ajws's strategies including how we create sustained human rights change and what impact we have had. In addition to designing research and evaluation that answers these questions, slre also helps ajws's programmatic staff seek and apply lessons learned and create innovative, evidence-based initiatives. (see sch. O)strategic learning, research and evaluation accomplishments:slre continued to ensure timely outcome monitoring, data analysis and dissemination, and support for biannual reflection spaces for learning and action. Slre engaged organizational leadership and board in the understanding of ajws's programmatic work by sharing data from our measurement systems, and in fy2024 supported a board learning agenda focused on programmatic strategy.slre continued its partnership with institutional giving and programs teams to fulfill reporting requirements for institutional grants and to seek additional funds to support our work in priority countries. Our support included preparing quarterly monitoring reports for existing grants, facilitating project design conversations for new proposals, and commissioning an endline evaluation.slre supported an evaluation focused on ajws's strategy to support organizations working with adolescent girls and young women (agyw) in the dominican republic. The evaluation was designed to complement our ongoing strategic learning and monitoring of our core grantmaking and accompaniment. The evaluation noted that the number and caliber of visible changes in the agyw and their lives to which ajws partners contributed deserves special recognition. Slre supported creating a synthesis of lessons learned, including from mid-and end-evaluation findings, from ajws's 10-year investment in improving the lives of agyw in india. This synthesis will serve as an institutional internal learning record and provide talking points that can be used to describe the strategic learnings and progress externally.slre advanced the work to further our understanding of our accompaniment model. This tool was piloted with ajws staff in fy2022, piloting continued in fy2023 and fy2024. In fy2025, slre will be reviewing the data and making revisions to improve the data collection to ensure it supports practice improvements. Slre, in collaboration with programs, furthered our work to refine our social movement tool and develop a participatory methodology for use with movement actors. In fy2024, the tool and methodology was further improved through an additional pilot with social movements. The revised updated tool and guide for participatory facilitation will soon be made available for others to download via our website at ajws.org/smt.slre has deeply prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion and taken steps to build standardized routine spaces for divisional education, reflection, and conversation that support our personal and professional goals to be more inclusive and anti-racist. Slre staff were instrumental leaders in designing and producing an internal training video on bias and microaggressions for all staff that will be finalized and launched in fy2025. Slre continued its partnership with the vice president of diversity, equity, inclusion and racial justice to support developing organizational learning around specific initiatives and progress towards our diversity, equity, and inclusion roadmap. Slre has represented ajws's work in external spaces focused on improving monitoring and evaluation. Staff are organizing a webinar series with interaction-the leading alliance of ngos and partners in the united states with a focus on serving the World's most vulnberable populations-on connecting data to action. The first webinar was launched in fy2024.

Marketing and communications division: the division is responsible for communicating about ajws to diverse audiences in order to raise ajws's profile on the national and global stage. In fy2024, communications staff members maintained and developed the ajws website as a vehicle for educating and mobilizing our audience, conducted online fundraising and advocacy initiatives, supported and promoted virtual events to educate and inspire our community, and promoted ajws through traditional media relations and through social media. Communications also produced and designed an array of content and publications including an annual report, two country profiles, and a wealth of stories that cultivated interest in ajws among donors, advocates, and new audiences. (see sch. O)we used these strategies to amplify the impact of our grantees' work in the developing World, increase awareness of human rights issues among the American Jewish community and general public, inspire activism to promote social change, and position ajws as a thought leader in the human rights arena and in Jewish communities. In particular in fy24, marketing and communications was integral to telling the story of ajws's $50m investment in adolescent girls and young women in india; improving ajws's digital outreach; and managing media interest in ajws's programs, position statements, and financial matters. The division also supported ajws's thought-leadership and amplified the voices of our grantees by writing and placing articles in the u.s. media about pressing human rights issues and crises, including prominent op-eds on the plight fo the ogiek people in kenya and the 75th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights. Across our whole portfolio, marketing and communications worked closely with others throughout ajws to ensure that our messages accurately reflected human rights issues, the situation in each country, and the work of our grantees; and advanced the organization's reputation, brand and mission.