From Small to Mighty: Empowering small organizations to keep women and girls safe
Interview with Mila Ioncheva, Portfolio Manager, UN Trust Fund
In 2014, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) introduced its small grant modality to reinforce efforts to empower small, women-led and women’s rights organizations leading projects to address violence against women and girls globally. This strategy has enabled grantee organizations to reach the most marginalized women and girls, and address the most severe forms of violence against women and girls with context-specific initiatives and adaptations. However, despite their successes, small organizations remain grossly underfunded* and lack the support to become more resilient and sustainable.
We spoke to Mila Ioncheva, who is speaking at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum, on how best to support and empower smaller organizations.
Welcome to the SVRI Forum! What is it like to be around activists dedicated to ending violence against women and girls (EVAW) at this important event?
It’s been two years since we were physically surrounded by like-minded advocates and practitioners representing many civil society, women’s rights and activist organizations. We’re glad to be here, and even happier to speak about the indispensable role that small women’s rights organizations have been playing, especially in providing lifeline support to women and girls during multiple, overlapping crises.
How has the UN Trust Fund empowered these organizations?
The UN Trust Fund is aware that both the work and growth of most women’s organizations dedicated to EVAW remain underfunded. Therefore, in 2014, it rolled out its constantly evolving small grant modality to rectify enormous funding inequalities in the EVAW funding ecosystem.
Also, in 2017 the UN Trust Fund piloted two new budget allocations for small grants: one for self-care costs of up to USD 2,000 and another for core funding for up to 7% of the total amount allocated for project activities.
Core funding is flexible funding that can be used for general operations. Core funds should contribute to the realization of your organization’s mission and vision and help support social change processes your organization is committed to.
Self-care costs can be used for a variety of expenses for the organization to respond to staff burn-out and vicarious trauma as well as to promote overall staff well-being and collective care.
This was a pilot initiative to more tangibly and intentionally contribute to organizational resilience, specifically targeting small grassroots organizations.
“At grassroots levels, small women-led and women’s rights organizations understand the issues, are challenging inequitable socio-cultural norms, empowering other women and girls to stand up for themselves, working with survivors and generally advancing women’s rights despite poor funding and other barriers they face.” — Chinyere Eyoh, Founder and Executive Director of SOAR Initiative
Throughout 2020–2021, movement restrictions to curb COVID-19 inadvertently put small organizations under pressure to survive while continuing their lifeline work. How has this informed the UN Trust Fund’s adaptations to support these organizations?
The UN Trust Fund put in place additional measures to further support the resilience of small women’s rights organizations, including by funding general and operating costs and being more flexible about budget utilization.
We’ve seen the impact of these measures through our surveys with grantees, which provide a better understanding of working conditions for most of these essential workers, feminist activists and women’s rights defenders.
Many of them put their lives on the line and “often do not have time or funds to reflect on [their] own safety, security and wellbeing”, as one survey respondent said.
Some use core funds to improve office size and design to make it more disability-friendly, supportive and inclusive. Others have used self-care funds to contribute to staff health insurance and support activities to curb burn-out.
What more can donors do to support small organizations?
When asked what would improve the conditions of using this budget line, survey respondents unsurprisingly suggested increasing its ceiling and asked the UN Trust Fund to keep it in the proposal budget as a permanent allocation. They said this allocation was in some instances the difference between unmanageable stress and their ability to better perform and support survivors.
The UN Trust Fund recognizes that it is crucial to support activists by investing their resilience. It is therefore also important that the donor community comes together and jointly ensure that the support is collective, sustainable and effective for small organizations.
