International Women's Tribune Centre

The International Women’s Tribune Centre is an international NGO in consultative status with the United Nations. The IWTC uses information, education and communication to support a large and growing network of women’s and community-based organizations in the Global South. In all its programs the IWTC strives to place particular emphasis on the importance of building community and needs of low-income women. IWTC's work is grounded on the premise that access to information and the ability to communicate are basic to the process of women's empowerment, to women's ability to re-defining development paradigms, to women's participation in the public policy arena and to the building of democratic societies. IWTC's work is focused in four programme areas: (1) human rights, (2) information access and communication capacity-building; (3) networking and organizational support; and (4) Women, Ink, a knowledge-brokering service.

Underlying IWTC's work is an emphasis on participatory approaches to work and the need to make explicit the linkages between global policies and the everyday realities confronting women living in poverty. Through workshops and training programmes, information materials and services, networking and enabling linkages, IWTC builds bridges between the international and the national, between the abstract and the concrete, between policy and people, and between ideas and actions.

IWTC is interested in reaching individuals and organizations working in low-income communities who see themselves as information multipliers and/or community change agents. Findings from a 1998 external evaluation confirm that IWTC is in fact reaching this key constituency. One of the largest of the women's international networks, IWTC's constituency exceeds 25,000 in 150 countries, 94% in the Global South.*