Being small is not what sets us apart. What sets us apart is where we stand: close enough to the ground to know which organisations are doing the work, and structured enough to get resources to them.
Communications Team, Mwanamke Fund · Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo
The Great Lakes region does not lack donors. It lacks funding that reaches the organisations closest to the women who need it most. Four things distinguish the way Mwanamke Fund works.
1. An integrated feminist tool, not a single-issue programme
Mwanamke Fund is a feminist integrative tool that responds in an innovative way to the needs of women in vulnerable situations, through a local and integrated mechanism for strengthening the financial and technical capacities of small women's organisations and local women's movements.
That mechanism addresses violations of women's rights; sexual and gender-based violence; poverty, food and economic insecurity; climate change and the destruction of the environment and biodiversity; poor access to health care and to sexual and reproductive rights; illiteracy; and the exclusion and under-representation of women in decision-making bodies. It also works to promote peace in a region devastated by a multitude of armed and unarmed conflicts over the past thirty years.
A donor funding a single sector will ask a survivor's organisation to choose between medical referral and literacy classes. We do not ask that question, because the women concerned do not live their lives in sectors.
2. A grassroots feminist fund, positioned where small organisations are
Compared with other funding opportunities, Mwanamke Fund is particularly well placed to engage as a feminist grassroots fund with small women's organisations, providing them with the support they need in the form of micro-grants and strengthening their capacity to promote and defend the rights of women and girls in vulnerable situations.
It also means a commitment we hold ourselves to publicly: no payment, commission or favour is ever required at any stage; free support in preparing an application, with no bearing on the assessment; a reasoned written reply to every applicant, including those we cannot fund; and no more than sixty days between the closing of a call and the first disbursement.
3. Local roots and knowledge that cannot be bought
Mwanamke Fund benefits from local rootedness, solid knowledge of the field, long-standing links with small local women's organisations, and micro-grant methods that are accessible and adapted to the local contexts of the African Great Lakes countries.
This is what allows us to tell the difference between an organisation that exists on paper and one that women in a village actually turn to. It is what allows our grantmaking committees to include representatives of organisations from all three countries and former grantees, rather than deciding about communities from a distance. And it is what allows us to keep working when access becomes difficult, through partners who are already there.
4. A willingness to fund what others avoid
Mwanamke Fund is willing to finance complex or emerging issues that traditional donors might avoid, but that could contribute to promoting the rights and improving the livelihoods of Indigenous women, women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and vulnerable and marginalised women and girls in the African Great Lakes countries.
In practice, that means funding an organisation that has never held a grant before, and accepting that it will need accompaniment rather than only oversight. It means a rapid response window that disburses within fifteen days when a woman must be moved to safety or a brief political opening must be seized. It means funding security measures — a secure phone, temporary accommodation, legal support — for defenders whose work exposes them.
It also means holding a position that some funders find uncomfortable: where a donor's reporting requirement conflicts with the safety of a survivor, the safety of the person prevails. No named survivor data leaves a partner organisation, and none is passed on to a donor.
What this adds up to
None of this makes Mwanamke Fund a substitute for large-scale funding. It makes us the part of the chain that large-scale funding cannot reach on its own.
“It is a question of justice, but also a strategic imperative for effective action.”
Mwanamke Fund
