Listen to an inspiring feminist podcast featuring Betsy Hoody, GFW's Program Officer for Europe and Central Asia (ECA), and Masum Momaya from the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID).

Produced by Preeti Mangala Shekar

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.

Next in the Annual Report: Financial Highlights and Stewardship of Resources »

By Eryn Mathewson

On a Tuesday evening in June, my colleagues and I modeled five different costumes that reflected the different ways militarism affects our lives. The fashion show was part of the Transnational Feminist Organizing to Resist Militarism event at our office, which also included grantees from Guam and Colombia who shared how their communities were being impacted by militarism.

Read an in-depth analysis co-written by Global Fund's Christine Ahn, on the recent harsh bill on Arizona and why this is a feminist issue. Read the article »

By Jenifer Wanous, Development Team

Women Hold the Solutions

March 4th, New York City

In honor of International Women's Day 2010, the Global Fund for Women hosted "Women Hold the Solutions," an evening of spirited conversation with leading feminist activists and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Some 500 supporters gathered for the dynamic discussion, facilitated by President and CEO Kavita Ramdas. GFW grantees Pinar Ilkkarancan, Debbie Kaddu- Serwadda and Sharon Bhagwan Rolls joined Kristof on stage. The three women leaders—from Turkey, Uganda, and Fiji respectively— reflected on controversial topics, such as growing Islamophobia and offered compelling examples of women leading solutions to some of the world's most intractable problems. Look for video coverage on our website!

Sponsors:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. | Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Avon | Marsh and McLennan Companies, Inc. City Winery | Jean Beard | Peter Melhado |Marissa Weseley The Jacquelyn and Gregory Zehner Foundation,/p>

GFW board member and UN's independent expert on minorities Gay McDougall, called on the Colombian government  to improve the situation for Afro-Colombian communities, particularly the lack of government intervention and enforcement around their land rights, and the severe poverty, dispossession and violence that they face. Read the full report.

Read an op-ed by Gay McDougall, Global Fund Board member, human rights lawyer and UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues

On April 20th, the leaders of nations around the world will meet in Geneva to discuss specific measures that should be taken to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and wherever it exists.