FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lindsay Bigda | lindsay@wedo.org
New collective funding mechanism launched to support grassroots projects
[GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, Nov. 9]—Six projects from around the globe were selected for the pilot round of the Gender-Just Climate Solutions Scale Fund, a new re-grant collective founded by women’s rights organizations and members of the Women and Gender Constituency, and launched at the July 2021 Generation Equality Forum.
Initial launch partners include, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), Women Engage for a common Future (WECF) and the Women’s Environmental Programme (WEP). This first pilot round is led by and resourced by WEDO.
Scale Fund winners represent innovative, scalable, and gender-just climate solutions from Cameroon, Mexico, Pakistan, Uganda, Bangladesh, and Senegal. The full list of winners with detailed project descriptions can be found here.
“In order to move money where it needs to go, we need to have every option on the table,” said Bridget Burns, Director of WEDO. “One of the biggest challenges we hear from partners and activists is that climate funding does not reach local communities. This new women’s rights collective scale fund will be another tool to fill this gap, to support replication and ambition of gender just climate solutions globally.”
The Scale Fund was founded in July 2021 as one of WEDO’s core commitments during The Generation Equality Forum, a global convening on gender equality. With pooled resources from women’s rights organizations and groups, the Fund builds on decades of ongoing feminist mobilizing for climate solutions. It aims to continue supporting previous recipients and honorees of the Gender Just Climate Solutions (GJCS)—an annual award granted by the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) network, of which WEDO is a coordinating member—with small grants between USD$5,000 to USD$25,000 to amplify and scale their work. The grants are intentionally flexible and need-driven, supporting a wide array of activities from communications and administration to media support. The new Fund also seeks to identify new transformative climate initiatives within the WGC network.
“We believe that the GJCS Scale Fund will strengthen our organizational capacity and accelerate our movement on climate justice,” said Naznine Nahar of BINDU, a youth feminist organization in Bangladesh and one of the pilot round awardees. “This funding opportunity will increase women’s participation in disaster risk reduction and contribute to building a climate resilient coastal community.”
The Scale Fund aims to address the consistent lack of access to direct resources by small grassroots women’s rights and feminist organizations by providing flexible funding with non-burdensome financial reporting. “In working to be an additional channel for the redistribution of resources, the fund aims to build collective global advocacy by adequately resourcing partners engaged in that work” Burns said.
Read detailed project descriptions from the six winners here.
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About WEDO
The Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) is a global women’s advocacy organization for a just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality, and the integrity of the environment.
