The With and For Girls Collective is a group of eight
organisations – Mama Cash, Plan
UK, empower,novo Foundation, The Global Fund for Children, The
Malala Fund, Nike Foundation and Stars Foundation –
with a track record of supporting civil society organisations working to
improve the lives of girls and their communities.
The Collective is developing a global awards process that will
provide a total of $1m to strong local girl-led and girl-focused organisations
next year.
Awarding
Girls
In its first year, the Collective will make up to 20
awards of flexible funding to small- and medium-sized
grassroots organisations 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.
The awards will not focus on a particular theme, but
will instead be open to organisations with a range of development outcomes –
from health and education to challenging negative attitudes toward girls in
their schools, families and communities.
What matters is that the awards identify effective,
girl-driven organisations working to change the lives of – and the
enabling environments for – adolescent girls where they live.
Seat at the
Table
A feature of the awards is their insistence on the participation
and agency of girls throughout the process.
In addition to working with networks and thought leaders
knowledgeable about girls’ rights and programming, a group of adolescent girls
will also provide meaningful input throughout the selection process.
The awards will seek to amplify the voices of those less often
heard – the voice of girls, the voice of locally-led development efforts.
By elevating these organisations in spaces of influence, the
With and For Girls Collective hopes that donors will recognise the critical
insight of grassroots development initiatives that prioritise girls'
participation, and that more donors might join forces with us – or start their
own collectives – to unlock the power and potential of local organisations and
the girls they work with.
Read the original pledge made at the Girl Summit.
Watch the With and For Girls video played
at the 2014 Trust Women Conference.
