With and For Girls Fund

We are the world’s first Africa-rooted global fund for girl activists and their allies, resourcing girls resistance across the globe. We dream of a world in which girls’ activism and organising is resourced in healthy and sustainable ways that genuinely works for girls at the unique intersections of age, gender and other identities.

Our ambition is to reframe power in philanthropic practice, showing what is possible when girls are put at the centre of resource distribution. We reimagine grant-making practice so that girls can define and determine resource distribution in the service of their own visions, goals and dreams of freedom. We are grounded in feminist principles of solidarity, reciprocity and collective learning, we are reimagining what it means to hold movement resources in deep relationship and with deep accountability to girls.

View the With and For Girls Theory of Change

Building on a legacy

The With and For Girls Fund brings all of Purposeful’s experimental feminist funding initiatives into one integrated participatory grantmaking hub, resourcing girls resistance from the village to the global and everything in between.

The Founding partners of With and For Girls continue to work as a collective to power the fund with resources. They leverage learnings to influence more and better resources for girls in philanthropic and development spaces.

Crisis, Conflict and Catalytic Moments

We also work to support young feminist organising during emergencies, crisis and at catalytic movement moments. The Global Resilience Fund for Girls and Young Women is just one example of the ways in which we shift resources and power to young feminist groups at crisis moments.

As activists and organisers, we understand how critical it is to have access to resources at key movement moments, to support strategy creation, communications, logistics, travel, healing space and so much more. In Sierra Leone, our Rapid Release Fund supports survivor leaders with a grant within 24-hrs of a key moment, allowing groups to organise and amplify their work at speed and scale.

How it works

WFG Fund model

1

Always open database

Girls activists submit profiles via text, voice note, video centering words and artistic expression

2

Girls in database invited to apply

Girls invited to dialogue based application across funding windows

3

Girls advisory allocates funding

Defining decision making criteria and co-creating further funding windows based on needs of group database

4

Girls are connected

to each other with advisors and Purposeful team to collectively define a shared learning and doing agenda

5

Girls co-create

(including those in the database) and access to feminist political education, self and collective care spaces

6

Convening around movement moments

locally, regionally, and transnationally

1. The database

Our always-open database is a chance to submit a profile in your own words and on your own terms and timeframes. You are then invited to apply for funding through the year. Applications are simple and accessible, with adaptation for girls with disabilities and those who can’t read and write.

2. The funding windows

We want girls to feel seen and heard by funders. We seek to fund girls and womxn in the ways they feel best responds to their needs. We have rolling application windows up to 6 times a year – most are unrestricted but from time to time we partner with others to offer thematic of population specific resources.

3. A participatory process

We continue to centre participatory decision-making across all of our Fund processes, shifting power with and to girls. We host a Global Girl Advisory panel made up of girl activists from across the world, who make decisions about grant-allocations and guide the strategic direction of the fund.

4. The funding

We offer a range of funding, predominantly core and flexible support, to girls and their allies. Our funding streams are designed to meet specific context, needs and catalytic moments in the lives of girl activists including resources for:

  • Core, flexible multi-year funding
  • Emergency response funding
  • Learning and growing funds: supporting capacity building, collective / individual care, research / documentation, travel, advocacy, collaboration and exchange
  • Thematic or geographic specific funds, often in collaboration with other partners
  • Girl Human Rights Defender Awards: a financial award with no reporting requirements to celebrate the ground breaking work done ofl girl activists

5. Collectivised accompaniment and care

We centre collective care and accompaniment across our work, grounded in principles of solidarity and reciprocity. We trust girls as experts of their own realities, working with them where they are in the ways they ask for support.

As a result, we offer the following:

  • Direct funding for capacity building as identified by the groups
  • Curating collective learning and exchange spaces (online and physical)
  • Tailored coaching for girl leaders, including support to navigate the philanthropic spaces
  • Support to hold Girl-Girl peer learning and support spaces
Girl Activists

Be considered for funding opportunities and connect with other girl activists in your region.