The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women brings together an ever-growing list of social justice funders committed to resourcing young feminist collectives through the pandemic and beyond. Through an activist-led participatory process, the fund will provide fully flexible rapid response grants to girls and young women living and fighting on the frontlines of the global health crisis. Global in scope, the fund will provide grants of up to US$5,000 to community-based organizations and informal collectives led by girls and young women. For more details please visit www.theglobalresiliencefund.org.
About the partnership
In early April 2020, as the reality of the global pandemic was taking hold, Purposeful and Women Win began exploring how they could support girls and young women with resources at this critical moment.
In six weeks, the fund went from seed to shoot — from an idea to its first application — a fund collectively imagined through a co-created process, now with a group of 18 funder partners and growing. Rooted in feminist principles of reciprocity, collectivity and transnational solidarity, the fund draws from the extraordinary strengths, networks, expertise and resources of a diverse group of funders working across movements, identities and geographies.
The fund is housed at and facilitated by Purposeful, a feminist movement-building hub for adolescent girls headquartered in Sierra Leone and working all around the world. In an act of solidarity with activist communities, Purposeful is meeting the administrative costs of running the fund, meaning all funds received go directly to girls and young women living and fighting on the frontlines of the pandemic. Born out of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, Purposeful has a strong track record in emergency response funding to girl-led and -centred organisations across every region of the world.
About the fund
The fund will provide fully flexible, rapid response grants to registered and unregistered, community-based organisations and informal collectives led by girls and young women* under the age of 30, including cis girls, trans girls, intersex and non-binary youth, gender non-conforming youth, gender queer youth and any girl-identified youth.
The fund is accepting applications from all regions and all countries, while prioritising applications from girls and young women with disabilities, girls and young women of colour, LGBTQIA2S youth, afro-descendant, indigenous and immigrant girls and young women, as well as those living in urban slum areas, rural areas, refugee camps, occupied territories and in conflict affected settings.
Because we have deep trust in girls and young women to determine what they need in this critical moment, all funding will be fully flexible and could be used to support work that includes:
> Emergency response work, including cash transfers
> Domestic violence support services, including via hotlines or online
> Wellness/healing/community care/trauma-related work
> Access for digital spaces and remote work/gatherings
> Feminist and intersectional public health responses to COVID-19, including digital advocacy campaigns
> Ways to practice solidarity, mutual aid networks and support mechanisms
> Documentation of human rights abuses as a result of COVID-19
A rolling application process for an initial six months will be underpinned by a participatory process where young women and girl activists from 20+ countries will review and make decisions about funding priorities and individual grants.
Girls, Young Women and the Coronavirus Crisis
COVID-19, like any other crisis, is exposing and exacerbating all of the existing systemic oppression and violence that affects girls and young women. All over the world — across countries and context — girls and young women play the role of primary caregivers. In the absence of functioning health and social care services in so many places, girls and young women become frontline health responders. Closures of schools and other learning settings not only limit girls’ access to education, but further isolate girls from networks of support. When girls and young women are removed from their peers, we know rates of violence, teenage pregnancy and forced marriage soar. For many girls and young women being at home in isolation means being stuck with their abusers. The cruel irony is that despite this intense pressure girls face, the response during crisis at best ignores girls’ unique needs, and at worst shuts them out completely. We have an opportunity to ensure girls and young women are front and centre in response and recovery efforts.
In these challenging times, there is still hope. Across the world, local communities are organising and collectivising at an unprecedented scale – using the very organising tools that girl and young women activists and their feminist allies have been using for decades in their struggles for justice. Indeed, it has never been more important to learn from the leadership of the girls and young women who live through lock-downs, political uncertainty and economic instability every day. And like in any crisis, we know many efforts to organise in the context of COVID-19 are being led by girls and young women, but as usual they will not be resourced or recognised for their work. We need their creativity, their spirit and their sheer resilience more and more as these days unfold.
Notes to Editors:
- The Global Resilience Fund is currently supported by Central American Women’s Fund (FCAM), Central America and Mexico Youth Fund (CAMY Fund), Disability Rights Fund, Filia, FIMI – The International Indigenous Women’s Fund, Fondo Semillas, Ford Foundation, Global Fund for Women, MADRE, Mama Cash, Plan International, Purposeful, Ukranian Women’s Fund, UNICEF, With and for Girls Collective, Women Enabled International, Women’s Fund Asia, Women Win.
- Applicants must have previously received funding from one of these organisations, or an organisation with a connection to the founding partners who can provide a simple reference check.
- Applicants can apply here: https://bit.ly/grfapply
- The fund is prioritising applications from girls and young women with disabilities, girls and young women of colour, LGBTQIA2S youth, afro-descendant, indigenous and immigrant girls and young women, as well as those living in urban slum areas, rural areas, refugee camps, occupied territories and in conflict affected settings.
- We are accepting applications from:
- registered and unregistered community organisations led by girls, young women and/or trans and intersex youth with incomes of below US$50,000 per year
- informal collectives led by girls, young women and/or trans and intersex youth with incomes of below US$50,000 per year
For more information, please contact:
Emma Tallamy
Isabella Lewis
isabella.lewis@nullwearepurposeful.org
