ForbesLife Executive Woman — Why the Buzz: Fundraising has never been stronger; under Ramdas's leadership, GFW's assets have grown to $21 million, enabling the fund to increase the number of causes it supports. Read More...     

Muadi Mukenge's Article In Huffington Post: What The World Must Know About Congo

A discussion on the impact of conflict and globalization on women, moderated by Moroccan American feminist activist Leila Hosseini. The panel features Taida Horozovich from CURE, a group of young feminist arts activists in Bosnia and Herzogovina; Patricia Guerrero of the League of Displaced Women in Colombia, and Leymah Gbowee, founder of the Women In Peacebuilding Network in Liberia. Listen to the Program...

As with all good parodies, there's a grain of truth in a fake news story on the Web that says Bill Gates could face another antitrust investigation — this time for "monopolistic charity practices." Read More...

Read Global Fund President and CEO Kavita Ramdas in the Huffington Post, on the issues surrounding the ongoing Olympics in China. Read More...

A recent article in the Seattle Times on Bill Gates'  move to full-time philanthropy includes comments by Global Fund CEO and President Kavita Ramdas, a member of the global development advisory panel of the Gates' Foundation. Read the full article

In early April, philanthropist Linda Gruber and her daughter joined Kavita Ramdas, president of the Global Fund for Women, for lunch at a little Iranian restaurant near the fund’s San Francisco office. Gruber had been a generous supporter of GFW in the past and Ramdas wanted to ask her to continue her annual giving at the level she had been committed to in the fund’s endowment campaign, which was drawing to a close.

The Global Fund for Women marked its 20th anniversary Thursday in New York with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf renewing her commitment to advancing issues which continue to affect the progress of women.

Watch Kavita Ramdas on GRITtv with Laura Flanders, share important highlights and accomplishments of the global women's movement. The first part of the show features an insightful discussion on sexism and racism in the US presidential campaign. Watch the show

When a group of high school girls were asked about the women whose leadership they admired, one of their top picks was Global Fund and CEO President Kavita Ramdas! Read this news item hot off San Jose Mercury News' front page this week!

Global Fund President and CEO Kavita Ramdas recently moderated a discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of  a new book, "Common Wealth -- Economics for a Crowded Planet" when he appeared at the Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley last month. Listen to the podcast

The super-rich new philanthropists want change. But their can-do know-how quick-fix solutions won't work in a world of systemic inequality and injustice, says Kavita N Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women. Read More...     

"I think there are many different ways in which you define leadership. As a feminist, and as a feminine feminist, I truly believe that we don't do a very good job in the United States of believing that you can lead by serving, and I think the United States needs to think deeply about being in service of the rest of the world." - Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO, Global Fund for Women.

Listen to Global Fund CEO and President Kavita Ramdas talk about the significance of women's rights as human rights in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' 60th anniversary. This short interview was among the clips featured as part of an hour-long special on the occasion of International Women's Day that aired across the Pacifica radio network on March 8.

Read Global Fund CEO and President Kavita Ramdas' piece in the Nation online on the issue of how race and gender can be powerfully leveraged in the 2008 presidential campaign. The Nation is a leading independent online and print magazine and is America's first weekly magazine. You can post your comments and feedback here.

Read Global Fund's Africa Program Officer Muadi Mukenge's article featured in the Alternet, on the human rights atrocities in Kenya perpetrated against women, during and after the election mayhem.

Recently, Foreign Policy magazine asked a group of the world's leading thinkers to answer one question: What single policy or gesture can the next president of the United States make to improve America's standing in the world? Global Fund CEO and President Kavita Ramdas  was among those invited to respond to this question.

Read a succinct article featuring Global Fund President and CEO Kavita Ramdas in the San Francisco Business Journal. View article (jpg)

Listen to photojournalist Paola Gianturco being interviewed on KPFA 94.1 FM on her latest book Women Who Light the Dark and why she chose to give all royalties from the book to the Global Fund! Listen to the archived show (originally aired on December 17, 2007)

We are pleased to announce that in our most recent grant cycle, the Global Fund for Women has awarded $2.6 million to184 women-led organizations in 76 countries. In line with our commitment to strengthening the work of existing grantees, 85 of the 184 grants are renewals.

The 2007 Gruber Foundation International Women's Rights Prize will be awarded to leading feminist Turkish activist and Global Fund Advisor Pinar Ilkkaracan, at a Symposium and Presentation in New York tomorrow, October 16, 2007 at 4:00 PM EDT.

The Symposium brings together major international women's rights activists discussing "Women Taking The Lead In Muslim Societies." Panelists Include Pinar Ilkkaracan,  Daisy Khan, America Society for Muslim Advancement, Zainab Salbi, Women for Women International, Sakena Yacoobi, Afghan Institute of Learning and Global Fund Board Member and moderator Anisa Mehdi, a leading journalist and documentary filmmaker. Learn more about this event!

Zeina Zataari, Senior Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa at the Global Fund for Women, was featured in Cultural Connect , an inspiring weekly e-magazine for young professionals.

India Post, a weekly newspaper for the Indian immigrant and American community profiled Kavita Ramdas this week.

Global Fund President and CEO, Kavita Ramdas, was interviewed in the May edition of FOLLY magazine. You can download the PDF of the interview on their website.

The Global Fund's Program Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa, Muadi Mukenge, appeared on KPFK's Feminist Magazine last night. Listen to Mukenge discuss African foreign relations in KPFK's archive.

Listen to Kavita Ramdas discuss the role of Entrepreneurship in Solving World Problems at Stanford University.

Read Kavita Ramdas and Maria Luisa Sanchez's Op-Ed in New York City's Spanish language daily, El Diario, on the recent abotion law passed in Mexico City. If you prefer English you can read the piece on Alternet or the Huffington Post.

"Several countries in the Middle East have signed international treaties on human rights protection, including women's rights. However, unfortunately, most of these agreements had remained on papers and have not been really implemented," Zeina Zaatari, Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa told the Khaleej Times. Read the whole article about our recent trip to the United Arab Emirates.

Muadi Mukenge, Program Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa, speaks with Africa Today's Walter Turner, about her recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. You can listen to the interview here.

Last night San Francisco's KGO TV aired a feature on the Global Fund for Women. You can watch it on their website.

Last week Global Fund President and CEO, Kavita Ramdas, spoke with Lisa Birnbach of Greenstone Media. Listen to their conversation here:

The Global Fund for Women is pleased to announce our autumn grants! After evaluating hundreds of proposals, we have awarded $1.6 million to 125 women's rights organizations in 58 countries. With 59 new grantees this fall, we wanted to highlight some of these remarkable organizations.

Last month the University of Washington aired a talk by Kavita Ramdas entitled, "What's Good for Women's Bodies Is Good for the Body Politic" highlighting the importance of investing in education, healthcare, and employment for women. As Kavita told the Seattle audience, as long as women's inequality exists, "our aspirations for a democratic world or any kind of a healthy body politic will remain unrealized."

Read More...     

Women's eNews

Esther Hewlett, founding donor and former board member of the Global Fund, is being honored with the annual Women's eNews prize, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, for her work and dedication to women's rights as a donor activist.

Read More...     

As a gesture of solidarity and support for migrant rights in the United States and around the world, the Global Fund for Women closed its offices Monday, May 1, International Worker's Day, and participated in local demonstrations.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Being a woman who grew up in a developing country... I saw firsthand the impact that a lack of good health in women does to a society," says Global Fund President & CEO, Kavita N. Ramdas, who spoke in Seattle about the connection between women's health and the health of society. "How can you have successful, strong vibrant economies in which two-thirds of labor tends to be undernourished?"

Read More...     

Africa Today, KPFA Radio

Africa Today host Walter Turner speaks with members of the Global Fund for Women's network of grantees, advisors and sister organizations from Kenya, Cameroon Guinea. Three African women activists speak about the issues facing African women and how women's groups are working for change across the continent.

Read More...     

San Jose Mercury News

Of the human rights abuses experienced by widows in India and throughout the world, Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women says, "In many parts of the world, they say a goat is worth more than a woman. Only where women find the courage to speak out do those things change."

Read More...     

San Jose Mercury News

Thousands of students are spending their vacations learning about global warming or helping Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild their homes on "alternative spring breaks"—service trips run by non-profits to boost awareness of world problems. How much impact can college students have on a world crisis of this size? A lot, according to Anne Firth Murray, a Stanford professor and activist who founded the Global Fund for Women.

Read More...     

Audio Interview

Questioning the role and relevance of the women's movement today, they discuss what it means to be a feminist, some of the differences (and similarities) for women in the Global North and South and even the role for men.

Download mp3 file (16.7 MB)

HindustanTimes.com

The first ever one-day symposium titled "Ending Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking in the 21st Century" attracted about 450 participants including business leaders, health care providers, educators, advocates, faith leaders and policy makers. In the workshop titled 'Confronting Global Human Trafficking: an International Perspective on Violence Against Women', Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women opined, "Trafficking is more than a legal and a law enforcement problem. We look at trafficking as a human rights issue."

Read More...     

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Where trouble and corruption hang in the air, voters around the world are increasingly turning to women to clean up the mess left behind by bad-old-boy networks. Kavita Ramdas, President & CEO of the Global Fund for Women, says that women's recent political successes in Liberia and elsewhere in Africa "are very much related to the decimation of the continent by AIDS and civil conflict."

Associated Press

"This has been a year in which women have taken grassroots struggles and transformed them into something bigger by developing a very considered political strategy," said Kavita Ramdas, president of the San Francisco-based Global Fund for Women, which provides grants to women's rights groups around the world.

Read More...     

San Francisco Chronicle

The Global Fund was recently the subject of a San Francisco Chronicle editorial exploring the unique role of women to advance peace and democracy, "What's notable is that these women are able to do so much with so little, to build a foundation for democracy worldwide from the ground up.

Read More...     

KQED Radio

Kavita Ramdas, Global Fund for Women President & CEO, discusses the disproportionate effects of natural disasters, such as the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, on women's lives on this episode of Forum with Michael Krasny. Other guests include Beverly Inman-Ebel, Charlotte Lindsey and Laila Khan

Read More...     

Agence France-Presse

Three times as many women as men died in the vast tsunami that struck about a dozen Asian countries just after Christmas last year, a report by the Global Fund for Women said. The San Francisco-based foundation said women also bore the brunt of key disasters this year, from Hurricane Stan in Guatemala to the massive earthquake in Kashmir and Hurricane Katrina in the US.

Read More...     

Hindustan Times

A report titled 'Caught in the Storm' detailing the disproportionate impact on women of the December 26th tsunami and other disasters that occurred this year was released on Tuesday, December 13th by the San Francisco based Global Fund for Women (GFW). The fund is the largest foundation in the world working globally towards advancing women's rights.

Read More...     

Associated Press

Women face a variety of hardships during and after natural disasters, according to the report, "Caught in the Storm," released Tuesday [December 13, 2005] by the San Francisco-based Global Fund for Women, an international human rights group.

Read More...     

Bay Area BusinessWoman News

The power to write a check is the power to change the world. That's what countless women are discovering as they move from economic independence to a position where they can use their financial strength to support the causes they believe in. This is not only changing the world; it is changing the face of philanthropy. "Women, if respected and listened to, have solutions the world needs to hear," says Leanne Grossman, Global Fund Director of Communications.

Read More...     

Idaho Mountain Express

On November 6, 2005, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama honored 48 Unsung Heroes of Compassion from around the world. The event, hosted by Dick Grace, of Grace Family Vineyards, lauded people from around the world for their extraordinary acts of compassion. Kavita N. Ramdas, Global Fund President and CEO, closed the event asking all to take compassionate steps to assist others.

Read More...     

Huffington Post

Bob Burnett, a writer and Global Fund supporter, recently interviewed Global Fund Board member Sakena Yacoobi about the inadequate efforts of the US in rebuilding Afghanistan, particularly in delivering education to thousands of Afghan girls. Sakena, the Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, which provides education to more than 350,000 Afghan women and girls each year, lamented, "If Afghanistan is to become a democracy, the people need to be educated."

Read More...     

Changemakers

Mayan Villalba, a member of the Global Fund Board of Directors, is Executive Director of Unlad-Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation, one of the winners of The Changemakers Innovation Award. The Foundation won based on their ideas for creatively generating resources from a diversified citizen base.

Read More...     

Global Fund grantees, advisors and board members are among the 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Global Fund is honored to work with these extraordinary women, and we congratulate all of the nominees from around the world.

Africa Today, KPFA Radio, Berkeley

In honor of International Women's Day 2005, Program Officer for Africa, Muadi Mukenge was interviewed on KPFA radio along with Dorcas Coker-Appiah of the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre, Ghana, and Anne Wanjiru of GROOTS, Kenya, both Global Fund for Women grantees.

Download mp3 file (6.7 MB, 58:38 min)

O, The Oprah Magazine

Cambodia is one of the most active trafficking centers in the world. In theory prostitution is illegal, but in practice a majority of Cambodian men regularly buy sex. The country, with a population of 13 million, has as many as 80,000 sex workers, a huge number of whom are under 16.

MARKET NEWS INTERNATIONAL

Dublon was named the FWA Private Sector Woman of the Year, and accepted the award at a dinner that drew hundreds of female financial executives.

An interview with Caroline Hartnell of Alliance magazine

What is feminist philanthropy, Caroline Hartnell asked Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the US-based Global Fund for Women. Feminist philanthropy, says Ramdas, must be willing to challenge the status quo, which underpins philanthropy as we know it and the patriarchy that underpins our societies.

THE COMMONWEALTH

Most policy makers have failed to address that one of the most significant causes for the continued devastation wreaked by this disease is deep patterns of systemic and intense discrimination against women—their lack of voice, and the lack of real choices in their lives as a result of entrenched gender inequality and inequity.

NOW WITH BILL MOYERS

"Even organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are talking about the fact that investing in girls education is perhaps the single most leveraged investment you can make for the social political and economic development of a developing country."

Click here to see the video.

Click here to read a transcript of the show.