U.S. announces award for women and girls empowerment

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a media conference in Estonia. File Photo: AP

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced two awards with grants up to $ 500,000 for the empowerment of women and girls.

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Innovation Award seeks to find and bring to scale the most pioneering approaches to the political, economic and social empowerment of women and girls around the globe.

The award is part of the State Department’s continuing emphasis on public-private partnerships, and is administered by its Office of Global Women’s Issues.

The award, and the office, is founded on the premise that the major economic, security, governance and environmental challenges of our time cannot be solved without the full participation of women at all levels of society, the State Department said yesterday.

The Rockefeller Foundation, as part of its mission to expand opportunity and promote more equitable growth, seeks to identify innovative approaches that can be scaled to address these challenges, it said.

A panel of jurors, co-chaired by Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, will assist in the selection of two award winners in 2010.

Jury members include Cherie Blair, Beth Brooke, Paul Farmer, Noeleen Heyzer, Anne Mulcahy, Sheryl Sandberg, Sheryl WuDunn, and Muhammad Yunus, it said.