Category: featured
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2024
Celebrating International Women’s Day 2024
On 8th March, we join the world in commemorating International Women’s Day under the banner Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress. These commemorations come in the backdrop of the Sixty Eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
For the African Women’s Development Fund, this is a time to reflect, celebrate the achievements of women in all their diversities and an opportunity to call for action and investment to accelerate gender equality.
As part of activities to mark the day, AWDF has organised Virtual Partner Convening on ‘Meaningful investment and acceleration of progress towards a world where women and girls are free from sexual violence’. The event will bring together a diverse group of funded and partner organisations working on Sexual Violence.
To be part of the event join us on:
Date: Friday, 8th March 2024
Time: 11:00am (GMT)
Where: Zoom
Register HERE to secure your spot and be a part of this impactful event.
We are thrilled to be joined by the following panelists in the discussion moderated by Nadia Ahidjo, Director of Partnerships and Philanthropy, AWDF.
Call for Proposals: Open, KASA! and Komboa Grants
Call for Proposals: Open, KASA! and Komboa Grants
The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is happy to invite applications for grants from eligible feminist and women’s rights organisations (WROs) led by historically marginalised and minoritised groups in Africa.
We have three funding streams you can apply to:
- Open Grants – These are for applications proposing work that promotes the rights of women, girls and gender-diverse peoples’ rights. We are prioritising projects that address structural barriers to gender equality and projects building the agency of women, girls and gender diverse people to lead activism towards gender justice.
- Kasa! Initiative Grants – These are for applications for work specifically addressing sexual violence and only for Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs) registered and working in Ghana, Nigeria and/or Senegal.
- Komboa Grants – These are for applications from women and gender-diverse persons led organisations and networks, operating within the African continent working to empower African women, girls, and gender-diverse people to exercise their voice, agency, and leadership.
Click HERE to read the full call for proposals
Click HERE to read our Frequently Asked Questions.
Click HERE to read our Application Guidance Document.
Closing Date for receiving applications is Tuesday, 2 April, 2024 at 23:59 GMT.
Click HERE to access our online application portal.
Want to learn more about our call for proposal? Please join us for :
The French webinar (with English Interpretation) will be held on Tuesday the 5th of March 2024 at 10am – 11.30am (GMT)
Click HERE to register for French webinar.
The English webinar (with Arabic & Portuguese Interpretation) will be held on Thursday the 7th of March 2024 from 10.00am – 11.30am (GMT)
Click HERE to register for English webinar.
Frequently Asked Questions – Cycle 50 Applicants
Frequently Asked Questions – Cycle 50 Applicants
Activity Report 2016: Weaving African Feminist Futures
Activity Report 2016: Weaving African Feminist Futures
A NEW CHAPTER IN OUR GRANT MAKING: LEADING FROM THE SOUTH
A NEW CHAPTER IN OUR GRANT MAKING: LEADING FROM THE SOUTH
[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]AWARD OF GRANTS FOR 2017-2018
AWDF is happy to announce the award of the first round of grants for “Leading from the South” for Africa and the Middle East, supporting advocacy and lobbying to advance women’s rights.
The demand was tremendous and we received many very exciting applications from women’s rights organisations and coalitions from across Africa and the Middle East. After a rigorous screening, 23 grants have been approved with grant awards totalling US $4,421,805.
Unfortunately, due to the volume of applications received, we are unable to provide individual feedback. Successful applicants will be contacted directly by Friday, May 26th 2017. For information on the basis of our assessment and our selection, please see the information below. [/tp]
[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]
NOUVELLE PHASE DE NOTRE PROGRAMME DE SUBVENTION DANS LE CADRE DU PROJET « LEADING FROM THE SOUTH »
SUBVENTIONS OCTROYEES AU COURS DE LA PERIODE 2017-2018
L’AWDF a le plaisir de vous annoncer sa première série de subventions octroyées en Afrique et au Moyen Orient dans le cadre du projet «Leading from the South» dont l’objectif est d’appuyer les actions de plaidoyer et de lobbying en vue de la promotion des droits des femmes.
La demande était très énorme. Les organisations de défenses des droits des femmes et des coalitions en Afrique et au Moyen Orient ont envoyé des propositions de projets intéressants et après un examen rigoureux de ces dossiers, 23 subventions d’un montant total de $4,421,805 dollars américains ont été approuvées.
Malheureusement, en raison du volume de projets reçus, nous ne pouvons pas vous faire des retours à tous les candidats. Nous allons contacter directement les organisations retenues d’ici vendredi le 26 mai 2017. Pour de plus amples informations sur le fondement de notre évaluation et sélection, veuillez consulter le tableau ci-dessous. [/tp]
A Peculiar Debut: Jennifer Thorpe on her new Novel The Peculiars, and what Inspires her Writing.
A Peculiar Debut: Jennifer Thorpe on her new Novel The Peculiars, and what Inspires her Writing.
Solidarity in word and deed: Translating the African Feminist Charter
Solidarity in word and deed: Translating the African Feminist Charter
Author: Jessica Horn, AWDF Director of Programmes
It may seem odd to be excited about a publication. However the story of the translation of the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists begs recounting as a tale of inspired collective action.
The Charter itself was developed by the African Feminist Forum Working Group in 2006 and adopted in by over 100 African feminists at the first African Feminist Forum (AFF) hosted by AWDF in Accra that year. The goal was political clarity. Every movement needs to articulate its visions of ethics and collective power-and its political bottom lines. The Charter provided this, and has been used since as a means of bringing feminist activists across generations together to build feminist consciousness, create new feminist spaces and even to help unite women mobilising against religious fundamentalism.
As beautiful as it is, the Charter was written in English- a language spoken by some but not all of Africa’s people. Translating the Charter was imperative. However as is typical in the world of women’s organising, the AFF faced the challenge of funding. What we had not anticipated was the spontaneous action and love that we would receive in the form of voluntary translation by African activists so moved by the Charter that they saw it necessary to make sure the people they organised alongside could read it too.
In its first incarnation, Beninoise feminist and AWDF staff member Rissi Asani-Alabi translated the Charter into French for use in the bilingual AFF regional forums and to aid the creation of national Feminist Forums in Francophone African countries. Using this, Senegalese feminists Fatim Faye and Kura Saar went on to translate the Charter into Wolof, a language spoken widely in Senegal and Gambia. In the revised version additional translation support was offered by Pathé Diagne, one of Africa’s leading linguists and political scientists (who has, notably, also translated the Quran into Wolof).
In Tanzania, staff of the country’s leading women’s rights organisation Tanzania Gender Networking Programme translated the Charter into Kiswahili, opening up readership in Central and East Africa and offering feminist discourse in Kiswahili including the term feminism itself and a translation of the concept of ‘patriarchy’ (mfumo dume).
And the feminist love has continued to flow.
On reading the Charter for the first time, Egyptian women’s human rights defender Yara Salaam offered, in typical generous style, to translate the text into Arabic. Her father, poet and translator Refaat Sallam provided proofreading support, making the Charter accessible now to Arabic-speaking feminists across north and northeast Africa and to African feminists in Arabic speaking diasporas.
After returning from the 4th African Feminist Forum in Zimbabwe in early 2016, Angolan feminists Sizaltina Cutaia and Âurea Mouzinho were inspired to revive feminist organising by creating the Ondjango Feminista in their home country. Their first step, working with Florita Telo, was to translate the Charter into Portuguese to allow women in Angola to read and rekindle feminist activism. Through this solidarity, Portuguese translations of the Charters are already in the hands of feminist activists in Angola, Mozambique and Brazil- including with two of Brazil’s ground-breaking women capoeira masters.
This year we have worked with East African feminist graphic designer Lulu Kitololo to create a stunning new redesign of the Charter, producing versions in all of the languages available thus far. For Latin script we used title fonts created by The League of Moveable Type, a self-named leader in the open source font revolution, offering highly designed free fonts. In Arabic, Yara Salaam suggested use of the Amiri font- an open source font project design to revive and digitise an older Arabic typeface.
We often think of solidarity as large public displays. However there is solidarity in these quieter acts of resourcing a movement through knowledge, skills and time. Feminism is not just in the saying, it is in the doing. The process of redesigning and translating the Charter of Feminist Principles has proved that.
Our heartfelt thank you goes to everyone who has participated in making the Charter relevant and accessible to the widest possible audience. We hope you find the new materials useful. And as always, do let us know how you are using them
Download the charter for free:
English
Français
Português
Wolof
Kiswahili
Arabic
http://africlub.net/awdf/wp-content/uploads/Charter_of_Feminist_Principles_for_African_Feminists.pdf
Grantee Highlight: SAYWHAT Shares New Documentary on the SRHR Defenders Program in Zimbabwe
Grantee Highlight: SAYWHAT Shares New Documentary on the SRHR Defenders Program in Zimbabwe
As dialogues surrounding sexual and reproductive health take a more visible place on university campuses, young people around the world, particularly young women, have worked towards inciting meaningful discussions and solutions to the challenges they face. In the African context, this conversation manifests in the organisation of innovative programs such as the “Reproductive Health Rights Defenders Program in Zimbabwe”. The Students and Youth Working on Reproductive Health Action Team (SAYWHAT), a Zimbabwean organisation supported by the African Women’s Development Fund, has worked tirelessly to create this program.
During May of this year, SAYWHAT debuted a short documentary film highlighting the achievements of Defenders program, how young women students are actively trained to participate in SRHR advocacy and address key challenges. Through a series of interviews, the viewer is introduced to the faces behind the great success of this youth driven organisation.
Tadiwanahse Bunikai, one of the members of SAYWHAT shares about the organisation: “It has groomed strong, confident, powerful women who are able to go beyond the issues of reproductive rights to discuss issues of national policy, politics, social and economic development, and entrepreneurship”.
As young women in Zimbabwe are faced with a number of sexual and reproductive health issues (which include but are not limited to child marriage, poverty, gender based violence and government accountability), SAYWHAT emphasises the capacity building needs of young women in order to better promote advocacy for institutional change within a number of tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe.
On this, SAYWHAT’s Programs Manager, Vimbai Mlambo states, “I have gained more confidence in myself and in my ability to relate with governance issues within my institution. I feel even more empowered to lead an organisation as a young woman. Mentorship has changed my perception about leadership. For me, leadership has become about discipline and self-leadership”.
SAYWHAT’s emphasis on leadership skills and knowledge building has not only increased the confidence of members, but has also produced agents of change. Some of the success stories achieved by the SRHR Defenders Program include projects such as the “Condomise Campaign”, a globally recognised initiative that promotes safe sex options to young women and men. The program has become quite popilar with women students, so much so that the Ministry of Health and Child Care in collaboration with the National AIDS council in Zimbabwe have accepted the proposal by SAYWHAT members to conduct the campaign at a national level.
Individual projects by SAYWHAT members have also developed more accessible and hygienic sanitary disposal methods for girls and women as well as marketing campaigns to increase the appeal for and effective use of the female condom. In this way, the Reproductive Health Rights Defenders Program ensures the social welfare of young women.
In addition to their work with young women, the Reproductive Health Rights Defenders Program challenges policies that miss the mark on SRHR and pushes for institutional changes that ensure respect, support and protection of young women. The Defenders Team has created persistent awareness about a number of sexual harassment cases on several Zimbabwean university campuses and are working towards the implementation of more expansive policies for women students. Partly due to this effort, one of the defenders has been invited to work as a women’s rights advisee to the presiding judge at the High Court of Zimbabwe.
Ultimately, SAYWHAT’s Reproductive Health Rights Defenders Team has a compelling focus on skills interventions and policy implementation on SRHR issues. SAYWHAT continues to empower young women into diverse, influential roles that, in turn, help to to create just futures for other girls and women around the country.
We are proud of the incredible work that our grantee partner, SAYWHAT, is able to accomplish each day in Zimbabwe.
Watch the full documentary on the Reproductive Health Rights Defenders Program below:
By: Mama Biamah
Grantee Highlight: Sowing Seeds of Progress with the Surplus People’s Project
Grantee Highlight: Sowing Seeds of Progress with the Surplus People’s Project
At the Ithemba informal farming area in Eesteriver in the Western Cape of South Africa, small food gardens, livestock projects with chickens, pigs and goats bear testimony to the “Women Organising for Social Justice” project more than a year after its conclusion. Project participants at the Ithemba farm tell stories of how they have steadily grown their food gardens, learned how to take care of their animals and turn their skills into fundraising activities.
In 2015, the Surplus People Project received USD 30,000 from AWDF to implement a year-long project entitled, “Women Organising for Social Justice”. The project increased women’s knowledge, skills and experience on environmental justice, food sovereignty and economic empowerment.
Watch the stories of the participants above and see the full story by clicking the link below.