Launching the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains
Groundbreaking New Fund Launches to Support Women in Global Value Chains
An innovative funding model will lift up local solutions and build long-term resilience for women workers and communities.
A first-of-its-kind collaborative funding initiative, the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains, has launched, bringing together corporate investors, foundations, and NGO partners to invest in the health, safety, and economic resilience of the women who form the backbone of global value chains. The Fund aims to raise at least US$10 million in pooled funding over three years to support locally driven solutions to the systemic problems that make women more vulnerable to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Resilience Fund is a joint initiative of BSR, the United Nations Foundation’s Universal Access Project, and Women Win/Win-Win Strategies in close collaboration with founding corporate partners and investors Gap Foundation, PVH Foundation, H&M Foundation, the VF Foundation, and the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation to support women workers in global supply chains.
This innovative collaboration provides unrestricted funds to organizations in the Global South—trusting local and regional women’s funds, women-led organizations, and feminist leaders to know what their communities need and enabling them to direct resources to yield the strongest outcomes. The Fund is embarking on its first phase in South Asia, with planned expansions to additional regions by early 2022.
A representative advisory board places grassroots and feminist leaders as equal partners with investors in determining how funds should be expended, using real-time feedback and learning to respond flexibly to changing realities on the ground. Global Fund for Women, the Naz Foundation, Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds, and Women’s Fund Asia will serve as representatives of women’s funds and grassroots women’s organizations on the advisory board. The Fund is open to investors across a wide range of sectors, offering them the opportunity to build new, long-term connections with women’s funds and locally-led organizations that focus on women’s safety, security, and sexual and reproductive health as long-term drivers of economic resilience.
“It’s exciting to see corporate foundations coming together to pool their resources to support women and girls in this novel way. The Fund is infusing new and needed resources into the ecosystem of women’s funds and their model of change—tapping into trusted women-led grassroots organizations for design and delivery of locally-led action.” Maria Bobenrieth, Executive Director of Women Win/Win-Win Strategies
