January 2023 update: Members can now join the ACWW directly, not through QCWA.
Renew your ACWW membership
Become a new ACWW member
Our voice is heard globally
While the QCWA’s primary focus is on Queensland communities, our capacity to show practical leadership beyond Australia’s borders, lives through our work with the Associated Country Women of the World.
The ACWW is one of the largest development organisations for rural women. Its goals are:
- To raise the standard of living for rural women and their families through education, training and community development programs.
- To provide practical support to our members and help them set up income-generating schemes.
- To support educational opportunities for women and girls and help eliminate gender discrimination.
- To give rural women a voice at an international level through links with United Nations agencies and bodies. (ACWW has had Special Consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council since 1947)
ACWW Projects are funded completely by the Members and Member Societies worldwide. These projects are small scale and women-led in rural areas.
Between 2016 and 2019, £167,439 was invested, through 34 new projects, across 15 countries, directly benefiting 14, 183 individuals.
In 2018, ACWW launched the Women Empowered Fund/WE Fund, which receives donations into six Priority Focus Areas which reflect the organisation’s charitable aims and objectives.
As a member society of ACWW, QCWA is aligned to the South Pacific Area which includes Christmas Island, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, The Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Vanuatu, Niue and New Zealand, providing in-kind and financial support to these countries such as:
- In the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, the Sustainable Water, Sanitation and Energy project is replacing old concrete tanks with new poly tanks to store clean fresh water.
- The Education and Capacity Building project donates classroom essentials for school children in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Items such as exercise books, coloured card, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, chalk, rulers, glue and pencil cases are improving classroom learning for many school children.
- The Nutrition, Good Health and Wellbeing project is delivering Birthing Kits to University of Papua New Guinea nursing students as part of their practical studies working within rural hospitals in their communities.
By providing useful, basic and essential items to local people most in need, these activities all make a huge difference to the lives of many.
How to help
QCWA Branch members contribute through their local International activities with each branch having a bespoke approach to fundraising and securing in-kind donations for the various projects.
How QCWA supports ACWW
- Membership of ACWW
- Fundraising through Pennies for Friendship (eg Women Walk the World event)
- Financial donations to ACWW projects particularly in the South Pacific Area
- Sales of secondhand jewellery, foreign coins and stamps.
About ACWW
The Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) is an International Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) and pursues its charitable objectives through its Member Societies, individual Members, and networks of NGOs. ACWW also holds Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). This enables ACWW to represent rural women, facilitate better access to information resources, funding community development projects and training programmes.
Throughout the World, ACWW Member Societies promote and support projects that reflect the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) was founded in 1929, out of the International Council of Women. In 1930, Mrs Madge Watt, one of the ACWW founders presented the following statement at the first World Conference.
“Country women have begun to realise that their best contribution to the welfare of their families and their countries is not to stagger on under burdens too great for their strength, which result in invalidism and premature death; but, through co-operation with one another, to secure that due care for their health as mothers which is their right, and those reasonable opportunities for education and recreation, and development of their talents, which every human being should be able to claim”.
ACWW connects and supports women and communities worldwide
1 Board; 6 Committees; 9 Areas; 82 Countries; 445 Societies; as at 2017.
The Queensland Country Women’s Association is a Group 1 Society Member and the QCWA is a Member of the ACWW South Pacific Area.
In 2019, ACWW celebrated its 90th Anniversary at the 29th Triennial World Conference held in Melbourne. This week-long event facilitates discussion and voting on Resolutions and Recommendations, which when passed, become ACWW Policy. These Resolutions then become mandates for ACWW Member Societies to act on in the next three years. Click here for more information.
January 2023 update: Members can now join the ACWW directly, not through QCWA.
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