We have uploaded our 2019 annual report!
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GLOBALGIRL UNEARTH PROJECT A GREAT EXAMPLE OF GENDER LENS INVESTING
“Too few girls have the chance to make decisions about any aspect of their lives – whether they can stay in school, whether and what they can study, when or who they marry, accessing health care, and if and where they can see friends,” Swatee Deepak, director of With and For Girls (WFG) says. WFG is a funding collaborative that seeks to shift the scales of power in teen girls’ favor. It gives financial support to girl-led and -centered groups around the world and engages young women in participatory grantmaking panels. This means, every year, former winning organizations train teen girls to choose the next prize recipients. As we’ve pointed out, girls and young women ages 10 to 24 make up 12.5% of the world’s population — around 900 million people total. But, less than 2 cents of every international aid dollar goes to campaigns directed toward girls in this age group.
Deepak says working with girls to address this gap is a worthwhile endeavor for funders. “Though meaningfully engaging girls in decision-making takes time, the learning, insights and benefits for us as well-known funders have been incomparable to other forms of grantmaking. Observing the critical analysis and contextualization of issues and approaches amongst 16-year-olds in the girls’ grantmaking panels blows you away.”
Putting Girls in the Grantmaking Seat
WFG awards grants in five regions; Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, the American continent and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. It gives out flexible annual awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, depending on the budgets of winning organizations, along with other grants and supports. So far, it has awarded close to $3 million to 60 girl-led and girl-centered groups in 41 countries.
In October 2019, panels of adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 18 from each of the served regions will meet to interview shortlisted organizations for the annual WFG award. The panels will choose up to 25 new winning groups.
WFG’s members are EMpower, FRIDA, Mama Cash, NoVo Foundation, Plan International UK, Comic Relief, Stars Foundation, the Global Fund for Children, Nike Foundation, Purposeful (the Collective’s current convening partner) and, as of July 2019, the Global Fund for Women.
Purposeful is a grassroots-based organization and movement building hub for teen girls headquartered in Freetown, Sierra Leone. As previously reported on Inside Philanthropy, Purposeful carries out research, convening, participatory grantmaking for girls, and media campaigns. Before moving to Purposeful in 2018, WFG was housed at the private Stars Foundation since it launched in 2014. We asked Deepak how the transition to Purposeful was going. She says it’s “been an incredible journey so far.”
“WFG and Purposeful have such aligned missions and new ways of doing things; collaborative, participatory decision-making, amplifying girls’ voices and, with Purposeful’s unique Global South-led and locally rooted approach, I see so much opportunity for continuing to carve a bold new path that our sector is so desperately looking for,” she says.
New Grants in the WFG Pipeline
WFG is launching three new grants this year. The first is the Visibility Fund, which will pay for current award winners’ travels to global events, peer spaces and conferences. Deepak says this fund aims to ensure “grassroots girl leaders have the space, opportunity and platform” to share stories, access resources and find new connections and partners.
The second new fund is the Collaborative Action Fund. It provides opportunities for winners to engage in cross-sector and cross-border partnerships. Deepak says it is “a game-changer, and I want every funder to give their grantees information and contact details of other grantees, and funding to collaborate!”
One example of a team effort this fund already supports is the Unearth Project by BRAVE in South Africa, GlobalGirl Media in the U.S. and the Samburu Girls Foundations in Kenya. These organizations are using $15,000 from WFG to find, train and support Kenyan girls in becoming storytellers and advocates, both on behalf of their teen communities and for African wildlife. Participating girls will create multimedia narratives centering on issues like child marriage, education, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual violence and reproductive health care.
“Since joining Unearth in late April, I have united with my sisters from across Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania in fighting against early marriage, [FGM] and beading,” Lekaasia, a 17-year-old Unearth participant, says. And, in partnership with Save the Elephants, the young women will receive education and training related to anti-poaching efforts, conflicts between wildlife and humans, and conservation practices. Lekaasia has learned about “access to clean water for both girls and wildlife, and employing more women in conservation jobs like rangers, researchers, even conservancy owners and managers.”
The third new grant is an opportunity for a secondary round of financial support. With girls again positioned as decision makers, previous winners will be chosen to receive additional flexible funding.
Ramatu Bangura, NoVo program officer, explains the benefits and importance of backing participatory grantmaking for teen girls. “We need girls’ perspectives if we are to dismantle all that comes with patriarchy, and we cannot do that until they have the freedom and power to make decisions that matter to us all. We are a member of [WFG] because we want to be in better practice of listening to and learning from girls. We want to support a philanthropic sector that does the same.”
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Philanthropy Women covers funding for gender equity in all sectors of society. We want to significantly shift public discourse, particularly in philanthropy, toward increased action for gender equality. You can support our work and access unlimited and premium content with one of our subscriptions.
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GGM GREECE WINS GRACIE AWARD!
We are so honored to announce that our Greek chapter’s documentary short film “Escape to Justice” is among the winners of 47th Annual Gracie Awards. Congratulations to the film’s team of producer/directors/editors:
Eli Fazlohah
Sude Faslohah
Andriana Theochari
Eleni Spyrou
Sara Pata
We want to congratulate all the inspirational women and their remarkable projects that were awarded, and look forward to the award ceremony in New York City in June!
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GLOBALGIRL MEDIA GIVES EAST BAY GIRLS A VOICE
OAKLAND — With newsrooms shrinking nationwide, youth in our communities have begun to tell their own stories.
GlobalGirl Media, a nonprofit organization that teaches teenage girls digital storytelling skills, was cofounded by award-winning filmmakers Amie Williams and Meena Nanji in Los Angeles in 2010. Williams, the organization’s executive director, eventually moved to Oakland, where she started a chapter in 2014, partnering with Youth UpRising and forming an advisory board of media professionals including actor Danny Glover.
“In the process of giving girls a voice, you introduce an alternative narrative, and you change the existing narrative,” Glover said in a GlobalGirl Media interview at their launch party in Oakland in 2014.
The organization now operates out of United Roots’ Youth Impact HUB on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland’s Koreatown Northgate neighborhood. They are truly global, with chapters in South Africa, Morocco, Kosovo, Chicago and Los Angeles. Girls in the program use Skype to bond with each other and discuss topics and issues that they face in their communities.
“We share a lot of similar ideas, and we’re all feminists, and we all have something in common that we want to strive to do,” said GGM summer academy participant Kasie Gonzalez, 17, of Berkeley.
The girls use a documentary journalistic approach to tackle controversial subjects that are relevant to them, such as teen depression and self-harm, teen pregnancy, sex-trafficking, and Black Lives Matter and other protests in Oakland. They can also choose to write and blog.
“When the camera’s in my hands, I feel invincible,” said Cheyenne Grisez, 14, of Oakland. “It just makes me feel happy. It makes me feel like I can do anything.”
Grisez was one of eight young women who took part in this summer’s academy.
“Living in Oakland is really hard. It’s a great place, a beautiful city, but just the things that are going down with all of the violence …” Grisez says before trailing off.
On the final day of the summer academy, Williams worked with Grisez, Gonzalez and Camila Prado, 15, of Berkeley, on a short film about Prado’s battle with bulimia. In the film, Prado bravely interviewed her parents and sister about how she was able to overcome her depression and eating disorder. They also went out on the streets of Oakland and asked women to rate their bodies. This film and others the girls made were shown to parents and friends on the last day of the academy at the end of July, as their hard work was celebrated.
“It’s their story, and nobody knows how to tell it better than they do,” Williams said.
Williams is passionate about the program and about telling important stories that are not being told in the mainstream media. Her own documentary work for television, nonprofits, citizen groups and political campaigns has won numerous awards, and her films have appeared on the Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC and many more outlets. She is clearly excited to share her knowledge with the girls, not only in Oakland, but across the globe.
“These girls are from really difficult, tough backgrounds. They feel trapped sometimes, they feel alone, they feel there’s no one they can talk to,” Williams said. “The camera gives them a lens to reframe their world and a vehicle to get out of that feeling of being trapped.”
Girls in the program practice their skills and build confidence by going out in the community and interviewing people for the short films, which are generally less than 10 minutes. Many of them had no prior experience, but found they had succinct storytelling skills.
“You give these girls the opportunity to not only tell their stories, they’re going to tell the stories of the community, they’re going to tell the stories that matter to them and their peer group,” said GlobalGirl Media summer academy project director Heather Faison.
Faison began her career as a copy editor, reporter and designer, and also did similar work with the Youth Advocacy Network in Cameroon, Africa, teaching girls to tell their stories through digital media.
“I work with these girls, and every day I leave inspired, I leave just completely consumed in gratitude, because I know, due to the work we’re doing with them, things will be better,” Faison said.
For more information, go to: https://globalgirlmedia.org/ and their YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCD4J0ngDDbyB7-KQ6ZdjL_Q.
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GlobalGirl from Greece gets credit in The Guardian
We are proud to announce Andriana Theochari, one of our global girl reporters from Greece worked on a photo-journalism project this summer about the devastating wildfires on the Greek island of Evia, with award-winning photojournalist Gideon Mendel. Their work garnered a huge spread in the U.K. paper, The Guardian, and has gone on to be featured in photo festivals. Stay tuned for more from Andriana! She is a rising star!
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