The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women
/OVERVIEW: The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women was established in response to the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. This funder supports women’s and girls’ causes, LGBTQ causes, global health and organizations supporting immigrants and refugees.
IP TAKE: The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women provides $5,000 grants to organizations that have received previous support from one of the 27 organizations affiliated with its founders. This funder may reopen its application system in 2021. It’s a unique, grassroots funder, but not the most accessible.
PROFILE: The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women was established in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Its aim is to provide emergency funding to women’s activism at a time when funding is limited and the crisis is “is exposing and exacerbating all of the existing systemic oppression and violence that positions girls as particularly vulnerable – especially girls who face multiple forms of oppression.” The fund is composed of five separate panels of women-identifying individuals representing Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean and the Middle East and Africa. The fund’s areas of grantmaking interest include feminist youth organizations, women’s health, women with disabilities, women of color, LGBTQ causes and immigrant and refugee women’s issues.
Grants for Women and Girls
This funder’s main focus is young women’s and girls’ activism. The fund acknowledges that in many places around the world, pandemic response “at best ignores girls’ unique needs and at worst shuts them out.” Early grantmaking has acknowledged and attempted to compensate for the dearth of financial support for young women’s causes during the COVID-19 crisis. Grantees include Safe Step, which helps Roma girls and women in Bosnia and Herzegovina to access public services including healthcare, and the Nicaraguan organization AMOJO, which works to prevent gender-based violence and to share information on the prevention of COVID-19. In Nepal, the fund has given to the Province Level Network against Child Marriage, a youth-led organization that advocates for rural women of indigenous and marginalized communities.
Grants for LGBTQ Causes
The Global Resilience Fund does not outline specific goals for its LGBTQ grantmaking, but has broadly supported several organizations that support trans and non-binary youth and sex workers. One grantee, FemPoint, is helping the LGBTQIA+ community in Kazakhstan access healthcare, mental health resources and basic needs during the pandemic. A grantee in France, the Syndicat du Travail Sexuel, aims to provide women-identifying and non-binary sex workers with legal services, housing support and basic needs. Other grantees working to support LGBTQ communities and causes include Brazil’s TColettive, India’s Amra Odbhuth Collective, Indonesia’s Transvoice and Benin’s Synergie Trans.
Grants for Global Health
Global health grantmaking centers on women’s health, reproductive health and healthcare access for underserved and marginalized populations. In Mexico, the fund has supported Mano Amiga de la Costa Chica, which provides sex education and reproductive health services to Afro-Mexican youth in rural communities. Another grantee, the Togolese organization Ladies’ Voice, works to ensure sexual and reproductive health rights and healthcare access for marginalized women. The fund also supports several organizations involved in providing services and advocacy for disabled women and girls. Among these are KAS, which works with deaf and hearing-impaired girls in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Uganda’s MUDIWA, which works toward equal rights for disabled women and which has recently worked to inform and protect disabled populations from COVID-19.
Grants for Immigrants and Refugees
Immigrant and refugee women represent another population of interest for the Global Resilience Fund, which has thus far focused on providing information and health resources to marginalized and displaced groups during the COVID-19 crisis. In the Republic of Georgia, one grantee, Stronggogo, works to protect the rights of immigrant and minority girls and provide basic needs to women and girls in marginalized communities. A Libyan grantee, Hera Organisation, works in refugee camps and orphanages to help girls develop self-esteem and physical and mental strength through sports programs.
Important Grant Details:
Still in its first year of funding at this writing, the Global Resilience Fund awards grants in the amount of $5,000. See the fund’s grantees page for additional information about past grantmaking.
Funding is limited to organizations serving girls and women with incomes of less than $50,000 per year. The fund is not currently accepting applications, but is expected to open its application for a second round of grants in 2021. General inquiries may be made via the fund’s staff via email.
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