In 2018, Mama Cash’s core, long-term grants to both emerging and established self-led feminist groups worldwide, grew by nearly half a million euros. With support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery, we launched CreatEquality to fund feminist initiatives at the crossroads of art and activism, such as Femix Network for Female Creativity in Serbia, which encourages girls to challenge gender stereotypes in music with its successful Girls Rock Camp. And our Spark grantee-partners continue to catalyse feminist activism in the Netherlands: groups like Mil Colores strive for an inclusive society and social acceptance of bicultural LBT women.

Women’s Funds are often the first funders to feminist groups working on issues that others shy away from. Girl-led organising has been pushing the needle on girls rights for decades, often with little or no support from funders and larger social movements. This is why Mama Cash and FRIDA, two women’s funds long committed to supporting girls, commissioned the first participatory research report, Girls to the front: a snapshot of girl-led organising, to explore some of the impactful ways girls are bringing about social justice in their own communities. 

Mama Cash continues to proudly lead the Count Me In! Consortium (CMI!), supporting the work of women, girls, trans and intersex people, because they are the best placed to address and challenge the injustice and discrimination that affect them. Mama Cash uses our knowledge, experience, visibility and credibility within the donor community to leverage more and better funding for women’s, girls’ and trans people’s rights groups. In April, the Count Me In! Consortium, led by Mama Cash, hosted Money and Movements in Kenya, a gathering of activists and funders to strategise about the future of resourcing feminist groups and social change. It proved to be the ideal space to envisage a future in which feminist movements are strong, resilient and thriving.