Grantee Profile

The landmark Half the Sky Movement was inspired by the 2009 highly acclaimed best-selling book by renowned journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn – Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.  The Half the Sky Movement amplifies the book’s impact and aims to ignite the change necessary to end the oppression of women and girls worldwide.  It accomplishes this by bringing together in innovative ways various tools including video, web, games, and blogs to raise awareness of women’s issues but also to give concrete steps to fight for change.  On October 1 and 2, 2012, the Movement aired a documentary, also called Half the Sky, on PBS in the U.S.  It was shot in 10 countries – Cambodia, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia, and the U.S. – and followed Kristof and celebrity advocates as they met women and girls who are fighting to change the difficult and oppressive circumstances in which they live. Show of Force is the production arm of the Half the Sky Movement, and the Force Film Foundation, the entity to which the grant was made, is the nonprofit arm of Show of Force.

About Our Grants

In 2012, the Woodcock Foundation provided the Force Film Foundation $50,000, paid out in two equal installments, for the Campus Ambassador Program (CAP), a program of the Half the Sky Movement (HtS).  The intentions of CAP are to 1) build awareness on college campuses of the issues described in Half the Sky and 2) mobilize measurable actions that “bring us closer to a fairer, freer, safer world for women and girls.”  As of 2012 year-end, over 650 campus ambassadors, of both genders, on including over 100 campus ambassadors internationally had been recruited.  Campus ambassadors have been hosting screenings of the documentary on campus since early October 2012.  They work to bring HtS into core curriculum at their schools by engaging interested faculty, suggesting Half the Sky for the common reading list for freshmen, mobilizing campus groups in support of HtS, and organizing events to keep the conversation going and build momentum around gender equality issues.  Campus ambassadors also connect global issues to local issues by bringing advocates to campus from local organizations that support women in their communities.