Resourcing Feminist Movements

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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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Lucy O.
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.
Magaly Pineda Tejada
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Elina Margarita Castillo Jiménez
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.
9 WHRDs
Snippet FEA We are living in a world right (EN)
Even in times of climate crisis, governments continue to encourage large-scale agriculture industries to expand. These activities poison the land, threaten biodiversity, and destroy local food production and livelihoods. Meanwhile, while women produce the majority of our food in the world, they own almost none of the land.
What if we perceived land and Nature not as private property to exploit, but as a whole to live in, learn from, and harmoniously coexist with? What if we repaired our relationships with the land and embraced more sustainable alternatives that nurture both the planet and its communities?
Nous Sommes la Solution (We Are the Solution, NSS) is one of many women-led movements striving to do this. This is their story.
Alexandra Lamb Guevara
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.
Helen Joanne "Jo" Cox
Snippet Forum Quoate Sara Abu (EN)
The Forum is a live example of what the bigger WE can do. We go to the Forum, we are seeds, we then get sowed. This we have to celebrate.
- Sara Abu Ghazal, Lebanon
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”
Mia Manuelita Mascariñas-Green
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Does AWID provide scholarships to attend the Forum?
Our Access Fund will offer a limited number of scholarships to fund the participation of activists who cannot otherwise make it, and don’t have relationships with funders who could cover their participation. So if you have other possibilities, please explore them. We will do our best to offer as many scholarships as we can, and will share more information about this process and how to apply in early 2024.
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.
Lorraine Gradwell
CFA 2023 - Intro - EN
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“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou
Welcome to the 15th AWID International Forum!
The AWID International Forum is both a global community event and a space of radical personal transformation. A one-of-a-kind convening, the Forum brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements, in all our diversity and humanity, to connect, heal and thrive. The Forum is a place where Global South feminists and historically marginalized communities take center stage, strategizing with each other and allied movements, funders and policy-makers, in order to shift power, make alliances, and usher in a different, better world.
When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand in 2024. Come dance, sing, dream and rise with us.
When: 2–5 December 2024
Where: Bangkok, Thailand; and online
Who: Approximately 2,500 feminists from all over the world participating in-person, and 3,000 participating virtually
Learn more about the forum:
Read our Frequently Asked Questions
What are some of the debates and conflict areas?
- Towards The Third International Conference On Financing For Development: Old Tensions And New Challenges, by Nicole Bidegain Ponte/DAWN (March 2015)
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‘A geopolitical Analysis of Financing for Development’ by Regions Refocus 2015 and Third World Network (TWN) with DAWN.
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The Zero Draft Language Map, by Regions Refocus
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‘Addis Ababa financing conference: Will the means undermine the goals?‘ by RightingFinance
Emma Gabriela Molina Canto
CFA 2023 - Submit application card - EN
We welcome applications across the full range of thematic areas and intersections important to feminist and gender justice movements.