Maya Angelou
Resourcing Feminist Movements
The “Where is the Money?” #WITM survey is now live! Dive in and share your experience with funding your organizing with feminists around the world.
Learn more and take the survey
Around the world, feminist, women’s rights, and allied movements are confronting power and reimagining a politics of liberation. The contributions that fuel this work come in many forms, from financial and political resources to daily acts of resistance and survival.
AWID’s Resourcing Feminist Movements (RFM) Initiative shines a light on the current funding ecosystem, which range from self-generated models of resourcing to more formal funding streams.
Through our research and analysis, we examine how funding practices can better serve our movements. We critically explore the contradictions in “funding” social transformation, especially in the face of increasing political repression, anti-rights agendas, and rising corporate power. Above all, we build collective strategies that support thriving, robust, and resilient movements.
Our Actions
Recognizing the richness of our movements and responding to the current moment, we:
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Create and amplify alternatives: We amplify funding practices that center activists’ own priorities and engage a diverse range of funders and activists in crafting new, dynamic models for resourcing feminist movements, particularly in the context of closing civil society space.
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Build knowledge: We explore, exchange, and strengthen knowledge about how movements are attracting, organizing, and using the resources they need to accomplish meaningful change.
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Advocate: We work in partnerships, such as the Count Me In! Consortium, to influence funding agendas and open space for feminist movements to be in direct dialogue to shift power and money.
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#6 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet AR
أبقي رغبتك في خوض تجارب جديدة على جمر ملتهب!
أنا: هل سبق أن ثبتّ شيئاً بقضيب؟
هو: لا، لم أفعل
أنا: تمَعَّن بالعمليّة الآن، لأنني سأُريك شخصيًا، كيف تضع الرأسمالية قضيب
استغلالها في أجساد العمّال
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A closer look at actual budgets reveals major income diversity and inequality.
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Confronting Extractivism & Corporate Power
Women human rights defenders (WHRDs) worldwide defend their lands, livelihoods and communities from extractive industries and corporate power. They stand against powerful economic and political interests driving land theft, displacement of communities, loss of livelihoods, and environmental degradation.
Why resist extractive industries?
Extractivism is an economic and political model of development that commodifies nature and prioritizes profit over human rights and the environment. Rooted in colonial history, it reinforces social and economic inequalities locally and globally. Often, Black, rural and Indigenous women are the most affected by extractivism, and are largely excluded from decision-making. Defying these patriarchal and neo-colonial forces, women rise in defense of rights, lands, people and nature.
Critical risks and gender-specific violence
WHRDs confronting extractive industries experience a range of risks, threats and violations, including criminalization, stigmatization, violence and intimidation. Their stories reveal a strong aspect of gendered and sexualized violence. Perpetrators include state and local authorities, corporations, police, military, paramilitary and private security forces, and at times their own communities.
Acting together
AWID and the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD-IC) are pleased to announce “Women Human Rights Defenders Confronting Extractivism and Corporate Power”; a cross-regional research project documenting the lived experiences of WHRDs from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
We encourage activists, members of social movements, organized civil society, donors and policy makers to read and use these products for advocacy, education and inspiration.
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"Women Human Rights Defenders confronting extractive industries: an overview of critical risks and Human Rights obligations" is a policy report with a gender perspective. It analyses forms of violations and types of perpetrators, quotes relevant human rights obligations and includes policy recommendations to states, corporations, civil society and donors.
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"Weaving resistance through action: Strategies of Women Human Rights Defenders confronting extractive industries" is a practical guide outlining creative and deliberate forms of action, successful tactics and inspiring stories of resistance.
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The video “Defending people and planet: Women confronting extractive industries” puts courageous WHRDs from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the spotlight. They share their struggles for land and life, and speak to the risks and challenges they face in their activism.
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Challenging corporate power: Struggles for women’s rights, economic and gender justice is a research paper outlining the impacts of corporate power and offering insights into strategies of resistance.
Share your experience and questions!
Tell us how you are using the resources on WHRDs Confronting extractivism and corporate power.
◾️ How can these resources support your activism and advocacy?
◾️ What additional information or knowledge do you need to make the best use of these resources?
◾️ How can these resources support your activism and advocacy?
◾️ What additional information or knowledge do you need to make the best use of these resources?
Thank you!
AWID acknowledges with gratitude the invaluable input of every Woman Human Rights Defender who participated in this project. This project was made possible thanks to your willingness to generously and openly share your experiences and learnings. Your courage, creativity and resilience is an inspiration for us all. Thank you!
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Lucy O.
Biography
With over ten years of finance experience, Lucy has devoted her career to for profit and furthering nonprofit missions. She also worked and volunteered at non-for-profit organizations. From the fast-paced world of Finance, Lucy has passion for staying tuned with tech skills in the finance field. Lucy joined AWID in 2014. During her spare time she enjoys music, traveling, and variety sports.
Position
Accounting Coordinator
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Concepcion Brizuela
Elina Margarita Castillo Jiménez
Biography
Elina is a young afro-Dominican intersectional feminist and human rights lawyer, committed to use her voice and skills to build a more just, empathic and inclusive world. She started Law school at 16, convinced it would give her the tools to understand and promote social justice. After a J.D. in the Dominican Republic, she pursued an LL.M. in Public International Law and Human Rights in the UK as a Chevening Scholar. She was the only Latinx-Caribbean woman in her class, graduating with honours.
Elina has worked at the intersection of human rights, gender, migration and policy, from government, grassroots collectives and international organizations. She helped litigate cases on gender-based violence before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. As a member of the Youth Advisory Panel of UNFPA, she contributed to strengthening sexual and reproductive rights in the Dominican Republic. She co-led Amnesty International’s first campaign on sex workers’ rights in the Americas, developing strong partnerships with sex-worker led organizations and using Amnesty’s position to amplify women human rights defenders and sex workers’ voices.
Elina is part of Foro Feminista Magaly Pineda and the Global Shapers Community. She speaks Spanish, French and English. Thanks to her diverse background, Elina brings strong governance and strategic planning skills, substantive expertise on the United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms and her bold determination to keep AWID as an inclusive organization for all women, especially young and Caribbean feminists. With these offerings, joins a global sisterhood of feminist badasses, where she can keep nurturing her feminist leadership and never again feel alone in her path.
Position
Co-President
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Luz Yohana Lopez Vidal
Alexandra Lamb Guevara
Biography
Alexandra is an anglo-colombian feminist with over 20 years of experience in local, national and international HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights programming. She has extensive experience in resource mobilization and donor relations with private philanthropic foundations and multilateral agencies on behalf of international, national and local NGOs, predominantly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to AWID, Alexandra worked at Fundación Si Mujer, a feminist abortion provider and educator in Colombia, RedTraSex and the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.
Alexandra has a BA in International Relations and Development Studies from Sussex University and a MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In rare moments when she is not working or parenting, she loves to swim, eat and has recently begun to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild with her son.
Position
Resource Mobilization Lead
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Manuela Martha Solís Contreras
Can AWID provide funding for my development project?
No, we regret that AWID is not a funding organization.
We and cannot review funding proposals or requests.
We encourage you to browse our list of donors that may potentially fund your women's rights organizing.
More resources are available from the Priority Area “Resourcing Feminist Movements”
Maria del Rosario Fuentes Rubio
2007: CSO engagement rises with the creation of the WWG on FfD
The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD), an alliance of women’s rights organizations and networks, was launched in October 2007 to advocate for the advancement of gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights in the FfD related UN processes.
- The Third High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development, 23-25 October 2007 saw an upsurge in civil society participation. Aside from the six round table sessions, there were hearings for civil society and the business sector.
- AWID delivered a statement at the plenary on behalf of Civil Society calling for governments to give greater attention to the importance of women’s rights organizations as agents of development, and the need to promote new mechanisms for financing for women in developing and least developed countries. The statement urged governments to give greater support to gender architecture in the United Nations so that the system as a whole could make progress in terms of its commitment to gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights, including the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of all persons.