International Women’s Day is recognized as a time to highlight the work, struggles, and joys that women face worldwide. And while many places show their appreciation with gifts of flowers or treats to individual women, this year at Avast we’re honoring Avastian women by focusing on three charities that are doing amazing work for women.

Those charities are: ROSA, Black Girls Code, and Klub svobodných matek. The issues these organizations tackle, as well as their representation of countries around the globe, directly reflect the value of equality that Avast holds dear.

ROSA

ROSA is a Czech group that serves hundreds of domestic violence victims in Prague and Czech Republic yearly. They’ve been around since 1993, providing both material and emotional support to women and children escaping domestic violence. And, unfortunately, they’ve seen a 45 percent uptick in people reaching out to help since the Covid-19 pandemic started. 

“The most significant aspect of our daily work is trust, encouragement, assistance, and — of course — safety, risk management, and safety plans are an inevitable part of our support,” ROSA tells Avast. “We provide these on a crisis line, help line, email, and chat. And, last year, we successfully added new tools to reach out to even more women in need. We provide online consultation via Teamsy, Zoom, and Skype.” 

Black Girls Code

The second organization, Black Girls Code, is based in San Francisco and New York in the United States. Their goal is to increase the number of women of color in the STEM fields by exposing young girls of color to computer programming and other tech skills. Through their work, they’re creating a natural pipeline to feed young Black women into the lucrative tech job market.

“By launching Black Girls Code, I hope to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming at a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up,” Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant says on their site. “That, really, is the Black Girls Code mission: to introduce programming and technology to a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.”

Klub svobodných matek

The final organization, Klub svobodných matek (Single Mothers Club), provides financial support and professional or legal consultations to help single mothers and their children get through hard times. They assist with food and housing costs, school lunches, Christmas presents, school supplies, and other material items to improve quality of life for families.

Internally, Avast will be voting to determine how much money will be donated to these three charities. We’ll also be recognizing Women’s Month and boosting our IWD Awards with a series of events following the IWD 2021 Charity Day theme, #ChooseToChallenge. Those events include fun custom Zoom backgrounds for our teams, weekly challenges aimed at recognizing women and getting more involved, and culminating in a Women in Avast Leadership Panel virtual event featuring women leaders at Avast.

At Avast, celebrating and amplifying the visibility and achievements of women in the workplace is important for us. We believe that a challenged world is an alert world, and from challenge comes change. Avast is committed to embracing the goals of diversity and inclusion as we move into 2021 and beyond.