Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women – A collective response to the COVID-19 crisis

More than 600 applications have been received for fully flexible $5,000 grants to support girls and young women activists to continue advocating for girls’ and women’s rights during the Covid-19 crisis. As a unique model built by founding partners with expertise across issues and geographies, the Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women has potential to drive replicable and scalable innovations to deal with future health and other crises.

As a pooled fund, the Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women comprises all the benefits of joint resources that can amplify the value of multiple contributors. An innovative governance structure and approach has also set up, offering unique value across five dimensions:

Direct & Quick Funding.

Participation of women’s funds provides a means for quick, quality investments at the local level.

“Pooled” Fund Expertise.

Unified network of girls’ and women’s rights funders, working to tackle longstanding global challenges from different perspectives and expertise.

Platform and Process for Innovation Dissemination.

Funders are investing directly in girls’ and women’s rights, but funds are also supporting indirectly a process of dissemination of knowledge and innovations.

Innovative, Participatory Governance Processes.

The Fund itself models an approach to empowerment that validates grantees are not just recipients of philanthropy but equitable stakeholders in the direction of the Fund. By doing so, it is adopting an emerging best practice in the funder community, responding to the grassroots demands of the people around the world.

Collective Leverage of Expertise/Resources of Global Organisations.

Women Win and Purposeful each contributed with its own unique expertise of grant making, platforms and personnel to further support the overall visibility and impact of the Fund.

The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women is one example of how Women Win is delivering in its commitment to respond to the current pandemic based in four key principles:

• Consider the unique needs of adolescent girls worldwide and the specific risks they face
• Recognise girls’ potential to lead and support them to take on leadership roles in the response
• Localise our response by prioritising the expertise of girls, communities and local organisations, including the commitment to shifting resources and decision-making into their hands; and supporting locally contextualised action
• Take a collaborative and coordinated approach that leverages collective expertise and resource