Grassroots.org

As we wrap up Women’s History Month, one Grassroots.org organization is giving women around the world a brighter future.

Circle of Women, a student-run organization based in Cambridge, MA, provides programs to close the gender gap in literacy and education in developing countries.

Its most recently completed effort, Project Wonkhai, built a secondary school for 1,200 students in Afghanistan. Now, the Afghan government recruits teachers and Circle of Women supports its staff with salaries, supplies and textbooks.

This sort of support is more essential as technology creates a smaller, more interactive global community, said Samantha Peretore, a 2009 Awareness officer for Circle of Women. “As our world shrinks into a single ‘global village,’ I find the opportunity to extend a hand to women across the globe to be simply extraordinary,” Peretore said.