What We Stand For
Objectives
- Promote and support the leadership of women, girls, trans, and intersex people at all levels, particularly those who belong to marginalised communities
- Enable a strong understanding of human rights and rights-based approaches among women, girls, trans, and intersex activists and organisations in the region, which will inform programmatic intervention and implementation
- Facilitate greater cross-learning and exchange between women, girls, trans, and intersex people organisations and activists in the region
- Influence social justice philanthropy, especially focusing on raising resources for women, girls, trans, and intersex people's rights work in the region
Rights Based Grant Making
Women’s Fund Asia supports organisations working from a human rights-based approach.
According to us, a human rights based approach:
- Is a conceptual framework which draws on normative standards of human rights
- Places the rights of the women, girls, trans, and intersex people who are being supported at the centre of programming
- Puts resources in the hands of women, girls, trans, and intersex people allowing them to lead the change themselves
- Understands that for transformational change to happen, the focus must be process and progress, rather than on short term impact
- Believes marginalisation and oppression need to be addressed in a systematic and institutionalised manner
- Promotes the practical implementation of existing human rights frameworks to strengthen advocacy and work at all levels
Core values of Women’s Fund Asia
We are Feminist. We believe in agency, leadership, autonomy and decision making and are committed to supporting interventions that advance rights of women, girls, trans, and intersex people.
We are inclusive and committed to promoting and supporting the rights of the most marginalised and oppressed communities of women, girls, trans, and intersex people in the Asia region.
As a women's fund, we strive to be flexible, aware of the challenges and difficulties of working on the ground. Acknowledging that the work that we support is a long term commitment, we make 'core funding' available to our grassroots level partners to ensure their strengthening and sustainability.
We are committed to supporting rights based initiatives that allow women, girls, trans, and intersex people to have a voice in key decisions that affect their lives and lead solutions for transformational change. We believe in substantive equality and non-discrimination, and that States have an obligation beyond simply passing legislation on equality, and encourage our partners to use existing frameworks such as CEDAW to hold their States accountable.
We believe in the spirit of alliance building and fostering partnerships with our peer networks, grantee partners, and donors continuously.
We strive to be transparent in the way we conduct our grantmaking and resource mobilisation, as well as our administrative and governance processes, without compromising on the confidentiality of our partners.
We are committed to being accountable to the community of people we work with including our grantee partners, donors as well as the larger human rights movements.