Empower Peace, Inc.

Empower Peace, Inc., doing business as Empower Peace, is a Boston-based tax-exempt nonprofit organization that operates as a prime recipient of federal grants funding international youth leadership and women's empowerment programs, with no federal contracts or contract vehicles. The organization has received 126 federal grant awards since 2010, totaling $3.2 million in obligated dollars across a $5 thousand combined potential value figure — a structural artifact reflecting the organization's reliance on small individual project grants rather than large umbrella vehicles.

Empower Peace's core capability centers on designing and delivering in-person and virtual leadership development programs for young women ages 15–25, with explicit focus on gender equity, conflict resolution, social entrepreneurship, and civic engagement. The organization's flagship offering is the Women2Women International Leadership Program, a ten-day in-person convening held annually in Boston that brings together emerging female leaders from multiple countries for intensive training and networking. Representative grant work includes a $202,800 project grant from the Department of State Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (Public Diplomacy Programs for Afghanistan and Pakistan, CFDA 19.501) to identify and train promising young women leaders in Pakistan in leadership development, gender equity, and personal growth; a cooperative agreement from the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs to provide leadership training and social entrepreneurship skills to six participants from Europe; and a multi-year series of country-specific project grants funding participation of young female leaders from Chad, Bahrain, Luxembourg, Serbia, Belgium, Algeria, Malta, the Netherlands, and Nicaragua in the Boston-based summer program. The organization also recently received a $1 million-plus project grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (awarded March 1, 2026, with ultimate completion May 31, 2027) to administer MY AMERICA 2026, a nationwide youth-driven project creating a large-scale mosaic of the American flag composed of hand-decorated fabric tiles from students across all fifty states reflecting on unity, democracy, and national identity.

Customer concentration is heavily concentrated within the Department of State, which accounts for 88 percent of awards. The Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs leads by volume and dollars (41 awards), followed by the Bureau of Public Affairs (31 awards), Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (19 awards), Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (11 awards), and Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (9 awards). Between 2022 and 2024, Empower Peace received 13 to 14 grants per year, with a marked decline in 2023 (9 awards) and only one award in the source data for 2026 to date. Several grants awarded in 2024 — including those from the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and Bureau of African Affairs supporting Women2Women participation — were terminated or deobligated in alignment with executive orders or agency decisions (ALDAC), indicating reductions in federal support for international exchange programming. One award faces ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, exposing limited near-term recompete cliff exposure but reflecting the organization's current constrained pipeline.