Grandmother Project — Change through Culture
by Leora Lihach
Around the world, human history has seen our female elders at the forefront of change, leveraging their cultural capital and tapping into their experience and social-emotional strengths. We examine this phenomenon in the introduction to this series. Over the coming weeks, Ashoka will be featuring four Ashoka Fellows who showcase how everyone can create larger-scale impact at any point in life.
Ashoka Fellow Dr. Judi Aubel
Judi cofounded the Grandmother Project — Change through Culture (GMP) in 2005 and, in 2012, became an Ashoka Fellow.
Through the Grandmother Project, Judi is improving the lives of women, children, and families by empowering grandmothers to catalyze change related to many issues: girls’ education, early and forced marriage, teen pregnancy, female genital mutilation, maternal and child health/nutrition, and intergenerational communication.
In Judi’s own words, Grandmother Project — Change Through Culture “is an ongoing effort to develop programs to support the well-being and development of women and children, especially girls, programs that are grounded in cultural values and realities.”
Realizing the Power of Grandmothers
International development and humanitarian organizations working in non-Western cultures often perceive grandmothers as barriers and resistant to change. Judi recalls, “For many years, working in community health programs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, I became increasingly aware of the fact that all of the programs dealing with maternal and child health were narrowly, or only, focused on young mothers and leaving out other influential family actors, namely the grandmothers.”
Judi notes, “Across Africa, for example, traditionally and up until now, the responsibility for socialization of young girls is the responsibility of grandmothers.”
After many years working with community programs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Judi realized that, across cultures, grandmothers have tremendous authority on matters concerning women and children, including acting as advisors to men on those matters. “In the 88% of the cultures in the world that are more collectivist, the extended family is still very influential, and, within the multigenerational and extended family, elders have a big influence, especially grandmothers on the health and well-being of women and children.”
Judi saw this influence of the grandmothers as an opportunity, insisting that the world should view these women as a resource rather than as an obstacle. “I think that grandmothers are a critical resource for programs supporting women, children, families, and communities given their knowledge, their capacity to communicate with and organize people, and given their status to influence others.”
A Powerful Approach
Judi was determined to develop an approach that would leverage grandmothers’ influence for the health and well-being of women and children.
The Grandmother Project has five key pillars:
- Building on cultural contexts and values
- Explicitly and actively involving elders, especially grandmothers
- Strengthening intergenerational communication
- Identifying and working with community leaders (formal and informal), and
- Using communication and education methods based on consensus-building
Judi explains the second pillar in more depth: “In all of non-Western societies — including indigenous cultures in North America, Australia, and New Zealand — elders play a critical role within a social hierarchy, and they are acknowledged for their wisdom and status. The second pillar supports explicitly involving elders, and especially grandmothers, because the work of Grandmother Project focuses on improving the lives of women and children. That is why grandmothers are on center stage.”
One example of the grandmothers taking center stage is their role in promoting positive cultural values in children. Judi describes, “Grandmothers do storytelling in classrooms. Their stories teach children about values that are cherished in African cultures.”
Judi’s team conducted a listening study to ask community members to identify priority values they want children to learn. She says, “The number one value according to community members was respect and learning from elders.”
Another example of the grandmothers’ leadership is their involvement in the program Girls’ Holistic Development, which supports girls’ education and discourages child marriage, teen pregnancy, and female genital mutilation. In the past, grandmothers were directly responsible for perpetuating female genital mutilation.
Judi notes that “Other programs to address this issue see them as the problem and go around them. We have involved them in a respectful way, and they have been open to changing their attitude toward this very harmful practice. Now they are the ones who are leading the effort for abandonment of the practice.”
Judi emphasizes that the impact of her teams’ work with grandmothers is observable. Several external evaluations of GMP’s program provide positive evidence that the “Change through Culture” approach is effective in shifting attitudes and practices related to child marriage, female genital mutilation, etc.
Impact to Last a Lifetime
Judi and her team have demonstrated that when programs actively involve grandmothers, and show respect for their status and knowledge, these grandmothers can be strong advocates for new ideas that promote and protect women and children. “Our work has shown that grandmothers are an abundant but neglected resource, and when they are approached through respect and dialogue, they are open to learning and to strengthening the influential roles that they are already playing in communities,” Judi concludes.
GMP’s approach helps communities to recognize and cultivate their strengths so that they can more effectively identify and resolve their own challenges. While the grandmother-inclusive approach has primarily been used in West Africa — and, to a lesser extent, in Asia — Judi believes that grandmothers are a rich and abundant cultural resource in all societies around the world.
The idea of empowering grandmothers to be effective levers for change on behalf of vulnerable women and children has profound relevance: “That doesn’t mean that the change happens overnight — yeah, sometimes we’re in a hurry — but we’ve definitely seen that the potential is great.”
For more on the Grandmother Project — Change Through Culture, check out Dr. Judi Aubel’s interview with Dr. Lynsey Farrell and with BBC on their podcast episode, “Grannies Fixing the World.”
Quotes in this article have been edited for clarity and brevity.
