Foundation for Research and Assistance in Law (FRAL) is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization founded in early 2012, but the official registration happened in 2014. The organisation aims to promote human rights, gender equality and access to justice for vulnerable women, youth and children. The founding members saw that although there were various ongoing interventions by the public sector and civil society to provide legal aid, there still needed to be more free legal assistance and legal education for people in need. As a result, the founders decided to establish this organisation to contribute to those pre-existing efforts in promoting access to justice.

Empowering Women to Promote Community Change project aims to promote and improve women’s living standards through entrepreneurship, business and technical skills to diversify their livelihood opportunities and reduce poverty.

This project’s anticipated changes include fostering women’s economic empowerment comprehensively, efforts entail increasing access to control and ownership of livelihood assets, thereby expanding opportunities for women to acquire, utilize, enhance value, and gain profits from these assets and investments. Simultaneously, initiatives aim to bolster women’s financial inclusion, facilitate market access, and enhance their participation in value chains. This involves not only improving business and entrepreneurship skills but also nurturing women’s leadership and accountability competencies, while also carving out a platform for their political engagement.

To that end, the project will train groups in economic rights and core life skills such as leadership, teamwork, effective communication, business planning, networking and marketing. Also, the project will connect the groups with relevant stakeholders to gain access to technical and mentoring support tailored to their specific enterprise. The project will assist all groups in obtaining the necessary financial capital, financial literacy training and establishing savings groups and links with financial institutions. The project will advocate for economic justice and respond to local government decision-makers to create an enabling environment for women to expand their businesses and take advantage of other economic opportunities, such as equal opportunities, markets, innovation, technology, and ownership of economic assets/resources. In this case, FRAL will encourage women to conduct a community power analysis to address all forms of power imbalances that lead to the deprivation of women’s economic rights, including the right to own property and productive resources such as land.