In late 2021, Together Women Rise announced its plans to launch new Transformation Partnerships that will allow us to better address the root causes of global gender equality.
“If we are ever to truly achieve global gender equality, we must address the social and cultural norms, beliefs, practices, and laws that prevent women from having equal access to resources, decision-making power, and opportunity,” said Jo DeBolt, Board Vice Chair, and Chair of the multi-stakeholder committee examining our Grants Program. “Transformation Partnerships will allow us to work in new ways with organizations creating this type of fundamental change.”
Our Featured Grants will continue to focus on delivering direct services to women and girls, whereas our Transformation Partnerships will create broader, systemic change in order to achieve global gender equality,” said Veena Khandke, Director of Grants and Partnerships.
For example, a Featured Grant might fund an organization providing micro business loans to women, while a Transformation Partnership might focus on working with banks and other lenders to change lending criteria in order to remove barriers for women.
This is just one of many possible examples of how our Featured Grants and Transformation Partnerships can complement each other. Our priority will be to work with past grantees who are pursuing systems change, although we may also work with new partners. We are currently talking with potential partners and will have more to communicate later in 2022.
As we implement our new Transformation Partnerships, we will follow current best practices in the field of “participatory grant making”. It will be all about supporting, learning from, and creating true, equal partnerships with our grantees. “These partnerships will lead to more informed and more effective funding decisions,” said Jo DeBolt. “We are excited about the opportunities this will create for our community – members, donors, and grantees together – to make an even bigger difference in how the world works for women and girls.”
Please watch for future communications as we move forward with these new Transformation Partnerships. For more information, please refer to the resources linked below.
At our January 2022 National Webinar, Dr. Veena Khandke, our Director of Grants & Partnerships, gave a presentation on Transformation Partnerships. You can watch the recording of this presentation HERE.