Mt. Bachelor mountain biking series for women aims to foster community

Utah State University’s Women’s Climb Night is a designated two-and-a-half hours per week when the climbing walls are cleared for women to practice the male-dominated sport with other women. This way, they can spend time in an accessible, non-intimidating, and non-judgmental space.

For young women in Egypt, outlets for their frustrations can be extremely limited under a political climate that oppresses freedom of expression, and in a culture where sexual harassment is rampant and systemic. The Cairo women's roller derby team is providing a welcome opportunity to vet physical energy, strengthen the bonds of sisterhood, and empower a diverse range of women through sport.

Obesity has become a health crisis for many women in the African-American community, but a group known as GirlTrek is working to change this by making exercise a social norm and creating supportive connections between women with shared goals. This new organization, which works to identify barriers that many in this community face, channels African-American history to encourage black women to walk their way toward better health.

A Rotary club in Topeka, Kansas, has transformed reentry support for incarcerated women at the Shawnee County Jail through Intersection to Care, a program that pairs immediate-release support with mentorship, skills classes, and subsidized housing. The program, led by women with lived experience of incarceration, meets women at the jail exit to prevent trafficking, connects them to recovery housing through Oxford House of Kansas, and offers technology, health, art, and movement classes inside the facility. Since launching in 2022, the initiative has assisted more than 1,000 women.

The city of Tucson and two nonprofit partners, Primavera Foundation and Old Pueblo Community Services, launched STAR Village, a safe sleeping site offering supervised tent housing, bathrooms, showers, case management, and outreach services for up to 25 homeless women and nonbinary people. The site is entering its second year, funded by approximately $300,000 in unspent city office budgets, plus nonprofit contributions.

In Kern County, where pregnancy-related mortality rates are more than double the California average and Black mothers face life-threatening complications at nearly three times the rate of white women, community doulas are working to bridge the gap between patients and the medical system. Since California expanded Medi-Cal coverage to include doula services in January 2023, more than 1,400 doulas have enrolled statewide, with active training pipelines building the workforce locally.

Singing Mamas is a community-based choir program where new mothers gather with their babies for group singing sessions. The program creates safe spaces where mothers can participate in music while their babies are present, providing peer support and creative expression, both of which help with postnatal depression and maternal mental health challenges. Multiple mothers report feeling increased mindfulness, calmer nervous systems and a reconnection with their pre-motherhood identities.

Cooperatives in Morocco, like Biosalim Cooperative, help women farmers access capital and provide training in agricultural methods, personal development and entrepreneurship to help them achieve financial stability and greater representation in their communities. Since launching in 2018, Biosalim has helped more than 4,000 women.

The basketball academy in Queens teaches basketball and English language skills to Spanish-speaking immigrant children. The academy helps youth navigate culture shock, bullying and the lack of community they may feel when they first arrive in the country, while ensuring they still maintain a sense of their parents’ language and culture.

In the 2000s, Kerala's Santhapuram village pioneered the inclusion of women in mahallu, which are mosque area committees, after women demanded representation. Groups of women joined forces to form a grassroots initiative and advocate for more representation. This led to women gaining roles as elected councilors and executive committee members in mosque governance, and now 87 of the 600 mosques in the area include women in their committees.