After Nehivena’s sixth grade teacher sexually abused her at school, he left her badly hurt and alone in the classroom. With difficulty, the 12-year-old made her way home where her mother immediately took her for medical care and contacted the police.
Have you ever used Facebook to post a video about an issue that matters to you? Has a radio announcement ever moved you to make a donation in support of a social justice movement? How often do you receive email petitions that advocate for policy changes?
Rapid advances in information and communication technology are changing our world, raising voices, and bridging communities. Yet according to the Global Media Monitoring Project, only 24% of people in the news media are women. Moreover, women in the news are not seen as experts, and are more often than men asked their age and identified by their family status.
Global Fund for Women grantee partner Isis International, based in Manila, Philippines, launched the Activist School for Feminist Development Communications in April 2010. The school is an interactive and participatory learning space for activists to come together to share skills, knowledge, and experiences on how media technology can be used as an advocacy tool for women’s issues.
At each Activist School, participants swap stories of their experiences using Twitter, showcase videos produced by their own grassroots communities, and share lessons on how to compete in the male-dominated worlds of journalism and communication.“I traveled to a strange place, met lovely people, and learned meaningful things,” says Ou Xiaoou, a participant from Yunnan, China. A truly feminist site for the dreams and actions of women, the Activist School is enabling women to remain the world’s best story-tellers, whether on the radio or on YouTube.
In 2004, a group of feminist activists came together with the goal of educating and empowering Bosnian Herzegovinian citizens to embrace diversity and end gender-based violence. These were the seeds of CURE Foundation, an organization that has since earned the reputation of being one of the most visible non-profit human rights groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Energy, enthusiasm and passion for women’s empowerment are embodied in everything CURE does. Even their name, pronounced TSOO-reh in local languages, is an informal expression used throughout the Balkans to describe assertive and sometimes sassy young women.
According to the United Nations (pdf), two out of three countries in the world face gender disparities in primary and secondary education. Although the rate worldwide of children not in school has dropped from 100 million in 1999 to 75 million in 2006, girls represent 55% of those not enrolled in school in 2010. This disparity is worse in many countries, such as Benin, India, Iraq and Yemen.
Young women studying in Morocco
GFW Accomplishments
Over 24 years, the Global Fund for Women has
Supported initiatives addressing the structural issues that prevent women and girls from receiving an education.
Invested in women-led organizations that provide skills and knowledge-building activities to girls and women often excluded from the educational system including widows, school drop-outs, teenage mothers, sex workers, and orphans, HIV positive girls and women, and girls and women with disabilities.
For 25 years, GFW has seen how educated women and girls step up to lead in their families, communities, and countries. We’ve seen how their education influences their confidence as they become empowered and improve everyone’s health, welfare and security.
Slowly but surely, valuing women’s education is also now shared by governments, corporations, and multilateral agencies. Major studies have found that when girls and women are educated, child mortality drops by 10 percent and the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS drops by half. Educating girls results in their delayed marriage and child-bearing, greater use of family planning methods, higher child and maternal survival rates, reduced vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection, increased labor participation by women, and enhanced benefits to children.
We have a holistic view of what constitutes education. We believe education can happen formally and informally, in religious or secular settings, and can be practical or academic. We believe that education can and should happen during a woman’s entire life. We promote a world where one’s gender doesn’t limit their access to education and support women’s groups working to break down economic, legal, political or cultural barriers impeding women’s learning.
Our Grantmaking
Worldwide, women’s movements are investing in education as a way to reduce gender inequalities and discrimination against women. Women’s groups run non-formal education and training programs as a strategy toward developing confidence, leadership and self-sufficiency. The result: previously excluded women and groups are motivating themselves to improve and transform their situation.
GFW support has enabled millions of women to participate in thousands of empowerment and skills-building training programs intended to increase women’s understanding of the underlying causes of their oppression, subordination and powerlessness; examine and confront their disadvantaged position; and gain control over their lives by transforming their relationships with men and social structures. Here are some of their approaches »
Formal schooling
Ensure access to schools, particularly for girls, and that schools are girl-friendly, free from harassment, and with sufficient resources.
Advocate for the placement of schools within easy and safe access to girls living in remote areas.
Advocate for access to quality, free primary and secondary education.
Literacy programs for adult women and girls who drop out of school
Non-formal school, alternative educational programs:
Courses and drop-in centers offering classes on life skills.
After school programs for young women.
Science and computer literacy.
Financial literacy.
Debate clubs.
Summer camps.
Women in higher education
Access to tertiary, university, and graduate programs.
Access to and capacity to succeed in non-traditional fields.
Women in Academia and Feminist Publications
Access to publishing houses, academic advances, promotion in universities, benefits and protections to teachers/professors.
Establishment of gender studies programs.
Educational System Reform
Ensure that school and university curriculums, as well as teachers, are gender-sensitive and inclusive.
Ensure that school budgets reflect the importance of girls’ education and the promotion of a human rights culture.
Support curriculum and classroom interaction that builds girls’ leadership and self-confidence.
Ensure there is no hidden curriculum that disenfranchises girls over boys, or those of marginalized populations.
Human Right to Education
Advocacy on educational policies and budgetary allocations and against discriminatory practices.
Campaigns to promote the importance of girls’ education as a fundamental human right.
For 40 years, Colombia has been a violent conflict zone with a displaced population of over 4 million, 60 percent of which are women. A GFW delegation of donors and staff recently traveled to the country to meet with the courageous Colombian women we support. Watch highlights from the trip.
Highlights of recent Global Fund for Women grantees challenging violence.
San Francisco, CA—On January 31st, 2011, the Global Fund for Women Board approved $1.8 million in grants to 128 women's rights groups in 64 countries around the world.
“Women are challenging violence by first making it visible and then resisting pressure from their communities to ignore or accept violence as normal. It is remarkable how women continually find innovative ways to end violence against women and girls. Some engage directly with religious leaders, while others fight for laws that protect women,” - Dr. Zeina Zaatari, Regional Director for Middle East and North Africa.
While our grantees work to improve all aspects of women's human rights, we're highlighting the work of women challenging gender-based violence as it remains a critical priority for feminist activism and is among our core funding priorities. Here are a few examples of the diverse ways in which our grantee partners are contributing to a powerful global women's movement to end gender-based violence:
In Ukraine, the Kharkov Gender Resource Center established the nation's first Gender Museum and toured its large-scale exhibition, “World Without Violence,” across the country and globally to raise public awareness of the issue.Grant in this docket: $14,000
In Southeast Nigeria, the Center for the Eradication of All Forms of Violence Against Women, a network of our grantees, is transforming traditional societal values that perpetuate gender violence by educating and engaging traditional and religious leaders to become allies in the movement to end gender violence. Grant in this docket: $9,000
Our first ever grantee in the Maldives, the Maldivian Network on Violence Against Women is promoting women's local political participation as a way to advance laws and policies that protect women. Grant in this docket: $9,000
In Argentina, the Instituto de Género, Derecho y Desarrollo, builds links between the indigenous and women’s movements to learn from each other and work collaboratively to end gender violence. Grant in this docket: $10,000
In Egypt, Nadim Center in Egypt addresses violence against women at the individual and systemic level by providing counseling and legal aid services to women survivors of domestic and state violence while advocating for protective laws. Grant in this docket: $52,000 over two years
For more information about our work, or to schedule an interview, please contact: Deborah Holmes Vice President of Communications Ph: 415-248-4800 dholmes[at]globalfundforwomen.org
About the Global Fund for Women
The Global Fund for Women is the world’s largest public foundation investing exclusively in women’s rights globally. Since 1987, the Global Fund has played a vital role in catalyzing a global women’s rights movement by mobilizing nearly $85 million dollars from more than 20,000 individuals and institutions to invest in over 4,200 women’s groups in 171 countries. By funding and linking grantees, donors, activists and policymakers, we have fostered a global network of women and men committed to a world of equality and social justice.
Last month took me to Dakar, Senegal, along with my colleague Muadi Mukenge, to participate in the Third African Feminist Forum (AFF). It was a week of incredible connections, feminist discussions on a range of issues facing women on the African continent, and I had a blast!
Women dance at the African Feminist Forum. Photo courtesy AFF.
In an era of shrinking resources, the Global Fund for Women was able to sustain its commitment to women's groups with over $1.5 million in grants, as the first part of our 2011 funding cycle. By providing support to local and regional women’s groups worldwide, we continue to connect and strengthen women’s groups to be a part of the vibrant global movement for women’s full, universal human rights.
Kavita Ramdas, senior advisor and former CEO of the Global Fund for Women, discusses the challenges and successes of funding the global women's movement in 2009-10.
The Roma Women's Center Bibijain Serbia, a Global Fund grantee for ten years, has provided literacy and employment training to over 5,000 Roma women from 50 settlements. Due to their systematic exclusion by governments, most of the women the Center organizes are illiterate; only 5 percent have finished high school. Through extensive community education programs, free legal services, and psycho-social counseling, the Center is improving the lives of Roma women in Serbia.
But Roma are not the only women struggling for justice and equality in the former communist bloc.
Twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, women are trying to preserve the greater access to education, health care, and social services that they secured during the communist era. At the same time, women’s movements are still working to undo the communist legacy that prioritized collective rights over individual rights and rendered the most marginalized women invisible.
Over the past 20 years, for example, we have supported 90 groups throughout the region working to advance the rights of LGBTIQ communities, such as Zagreb Pride in Croatia. Pride festivals are just one part of a coordinated strategy used by LGBTIQ movements to raise awareness, foster national dialogue and promote policies to advance the rights of sexual and gender minorities. These groups are building new, diverse movements that advance all women’s rights while also highlighting the unique challenges of the previously invisible: ethnic and religious minorities, queer activists, sex workers, women with disabilities, and refugee and displaced women.
