We Document. We Elevate. We Help the Helpers Raise Money.
Ripple Effect Images identifies top aid groups that empower women and children and sends world-class photographers and filmmakers to document their programs. The resulting films and images dramatically improve their fundraising.
© Ami Vitale | Ripple Effect Images
Our Seven Pillars
© Lynn Johnson | Ripple Effect Images
“When drought parches wells and streams, someone must carry water. When storms bring devastation and disease, someone has to nurse the sick. Climate change hits hardest on the planet’s vulnerable edges. If women hold up half the sky, what do we do when it seems the sky is falling?”
– Barbara Kingsolver, Contributing Writer
Food Security
Challenge: Women and girls represent as much as 80% of the agricultural labor force in many parts of the world, yet they are often prevented from owning land, marketing their goods, and accessing sustainable agricultural practices.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners offer education in nutrition and sustainable agriculture, advocate for equity in land ownership, and provide women-centric models for marketing and microfinance.
Watch Our Food Security Films:
© Lynn Johnson | Ripple Effect Images
Water & Sanitation
Challenge: Consequences of climate change and pollution—drought, rising seas, erosion, and flooding—have made the availability of clean water more limited than ever. The continual search for and transport of water keep women from more productive
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners support programs that train and empower women to build and manage water systems, use renewable energy to move water, and maximize water conservation strategies.
Watch Our Water Availability Films:
© Ami Vitale | Ripple Effect Images
Health
Challenge: Poor families, especially in rural areas, have little or no access to health care. More than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, household air pollution is the number one killer of women and children in the developing world annually. Cooking over burning coal, wood, or dung indoors claims 4.3 million annually.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners train local women entrepreneurs to deliver health information, treatment, and clean cookstoves that help women care for the sick and prevent further illness.
Watch Our Health Films:
© Lynn Johnson | Ripple Effect Images
Education
Challenge: The best way to help cultures value women is to ensure that girls have equal access to education. An educated girl will marry an average of four years later and have fewer children than her uneducated counterpart. Educated girls grow in confidence and become strong community contributors.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners find innovative ways to remove obstacles that keep girls from reaching educational parity with their male counterparts. Programs offering economic opportunity to mothers are part of the solution.
Watch Our Education FIlms:
© Lynn Johnson | Ripple Effect Images
Energy
Challenge: Nearly half the world’s population relies on fossil fuels for cooking, heating, and lighting. Unsustainable fuels exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and devastating disease.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners engage local women entrepreneurs to distribute energy-efficient solutions, as healthy cooking, heating and solar options, that increase productivity and reduce reliance on solid fuels.
Watch Our Energy Films:
© Annie Griffiths | Ripple Effect Images
Economic Empowerment
Challenge: Without economic independence, women are often trapped in unhealthy and abusive systems. Those who can earn an income have far more options to fortify themselves and their children. Individuals who earn their own money lift their families, their communities, and other women entrepreneurs.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners promote female entrepreneurship via microfinance, vocational training, innovative marketing, and women’s trade cooperatives.
Watch Our Economic Empowerment Films:
© Ami Vitale | Ripple Effect Images
Climate Change
Challenge: Seventy percent of those who die in any climate disaster are women. In drought, they walk for hours in search of water. In flood, they face ruined homes or resettlement. When survival becomes impossible, women are the last to leave, often bringing with them their children and the elderly.
Solution: Ripple’s aid partners train women to adapt to climate change by developing survival skills, replanting trees, and securing reliable water sources.
Watch Our Climate Change Films:
© Ami Vitale | Ripple Effect Images