Cummins Powers Women advocates for change in Asia Pacific

Since its launch five years ago, the Cummins Powers Women (CPW) initiative has had deep and long-lasting impact on women around the globe. Given the staggering statistics surrounding domestic violence cases against women in the Asia Pacific region, Cummins colleagues there have been researching, developing resources, and establishing partnerships to address the need. 

According to UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, at least one in three women in the world are victims of domestic and sexual assault. In many countries across Asia and the Pacific, the proportion of women who report having experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime is substantially higher than the 27% global average. Further, as many as 75% of women have experienced sexual harassment.

“Cummins has a strong CPW group of volunteers in our APAC region, and we are fortunate to have some of our employees engaged in skilled volunteering to help address the dire need of protecting women experiencing domestic violence in this area of the world,” says Kate Teixeira, Senior Counsel, Asia Pacific at Cummins and CPW sponsor for Asia Pacific. “We have been working on a number of projects in partnership with Global Rights for Women (GRW), a non-profit working with more than 60 international partners to identify obstacles to justice and safety for survivors of domestic violence. Although there is much work to do, the progress we are making through this partnership is inspiring.” 

Collaborating to create resources

In 2020, Cummins formed a partnership with an external law firm and GRW to research the various domestic violence laws around the world. The collaboration effort resulted in the creation of an online tool to make the research available to non-governmental organizations, victims of domestic violence, and victims’ support services where such resources were scarce and difficult to access. The team of about 500 lawyers started by studying the country laws then worked together to create the online tool to help navigate the legal system in any country. The result is that anyone in the world can view country laws, rights, policies, services, and penalties related to domestic violence. 

“By users becoming better informed about the laws and their rights pertaining to those laws, they can make meaningful decisions on how to take action,” continues Teixeira. “With its easy access and encouraged usage, the online tool has gained momentum and been instrumental in helping women have access to information about the complex legal systems of their respective countries. Progress is being made and, ideally, these efforts will eventually aid in modifying the laws and government policies to support the rights of women everywhere.” 

Cummins volunteers, together with the lawyers from other organizations, contributed about 400 hours of research to the project’s development. Their hard work was recognized by Cummins when the team was awarded a Global Impact Award, Cummins’ internal recognition program that celebrates employees’ efforts and encourages and honors outstanding, impactful work.

Sharing what works

Following the success of the online tool development, Cummins again partnered with GRW for an initiative based in the Philippines. CPW has provided a two-year grant to GRW to fund a gender-based violence collaboration with grassroots organizations in Manilla.

In September 2022, GRW started identifying women’s rights and survivor services organizations in the metro Manila area by creating a Systemic Advocacy Learning Lab (SALL). With this, GRW was able to connect and form agreements with women’s rights and survivor services organizations. The outreach to over a dozen groups and individual contacts led to a series of online meetings and ultimately in-person visits to GRW partners. That October, GRW met with more than 50 staff and leadership at Cummins Philippines to explain more about the work and how they could support gender equity.

Jennifer Beloso, Corporate Counsel, Cummins Sales and Service Philippines, tells us about Cummins’ involvement. “We started by analyzing the gaps and barriers between victims and the judicial system. To do this, focus groups were created to bring victims together to find out what to do to change, improve and, hopefully, eventually, eradicate domestic violence in these areas of the world. At the end of one year, GRW has been able to gather a group of trusted advisors, create and launch SALL, gain confidence of participating organizations that GRW is a credible resource, and introduce skills and methods for which participants are already seeing potential application. It’s been rewarding to be a participant in this great collaboration with Global Rights for Women, particularly in the SALL Summit held this May in Manilla. I am proud that Cummins is involved and so supportive of this journey to address domestic violence not only in this region but the world.”

Cummins Powers Women represents a $23 million commitment in proven programs designed to create large-scale change in the lives of women and girls globally. Since 2018, CPW has served more than 27 million women and girls and invested in 253 advocacy initiatives in 5 regions, resulting in 47 laws and policies supporting gender equality.