This paper describes a participatory research (PR) project encompassing a capacity-development programme and advocacy skill-building initiative for rural women. The project actively engaged four prominent women's non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Sri Lanka: Agromart Foundation, Centre for Women's Research (CENWOR), Sarvodaya Women's Movement, and the Muslim Women's Research and Action Forum (MWRAF) in partnership with the resources of three units at Northern Illinois University in the United States with extensive field experience in university-NGO collaboration: the International Programs Division, the Adult and Higher Education Graduate Programmes, and University Resources for Women. The initial major goal of the grant project, titled "Grassroots Organizing by Women" or GROW, funded by the US Department of State, Office of Citizen Exchanges, was to stimulate and build the capacities of the leaders of four selected women's NGOs in Sri Lanka to face new challenges and opportunities for strengthening women's participation in grassroots democracy within the context of a multi-ethnic society. Within two months of the inauguration of the project, the four NGO partners developed an implementation structure through which each organisation focused its energies on a single rural "model village". In each case, the NGO partner selected a village in which basic survival needs remained largely unmet. One of the four villages includes Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim residents, one includes primarily Tamil and Muslim residents, and the other two villages are home to only the Sinhala majority. The foundation for the project that is described in this paper began in July 2002 with a two-year grant and has continued through a second two-year grant that builds on the work of the first.