CEG grew out of the earlier work of NWAP (National Women and HIV/AIDS Project), an organization which sought to empower women, organize them at the community level and build a grassroots movement around the issues facing women with respect to HIV/AIDS.

NWAP was founded by Ms. A. Toni Young, Executive Director, who has more than 15 years of related experience working with HIV/AIDS, women and communities of color. NWAP was the first national grassroots women and HIV/AIDS organization committed solely to the needs of women living with and at risk for HIV/AIDS, with an emphasis on women of color.

In early 1994, with the support of HIV-positive women throughout the country, NWAP began distribution of the National Women and HIV/AIDS Survey. In response to the data collected, NWAP was able get a sense of the needs of women living with HIV/AIDS and the organizations who served them. As a follow-up to the survey, NWAP convened the first National Women and HIV/AIDS Summit.

In certain ways, little has changed since the National Women and HIV/AIDS Summit in 1994. Women - particularly women of color - still lack adequate prevention and care services. The agencies which serve them are often under-funded, have limited access to larger funding pools, or need to develop infrastructure. In order to more effectively stimulate change in this environment, NWAP shifted its energies from being policy-focused to being more community and program oriented. With this change in direction and a move to San Francisco, NWAP felt the need to reshape the organization. Thus, by vote of the Board of Directors, its name was changed to Community Education Group in 1997, and its mission was redefined.