Resources from Funders and Allied Organisations Supporting Sex Workers’ RightsWe have organised the growing community of organisations supporting sex worker rights and provided brief introductions to strengthen the support available to the sex worker rights movement.
We have categorised them (funders, sex worker-led networks, and allied organisation) as well as created tags for key topics that intersect with our work.
AIDS Fonds is “a Dutch non-profit organisation that works internationally. Working with communities as equals is at the heart of all our work. We conduct research and ensure that HIV, AIDS and STIs remain high on the agenda worldwide. Together we are working to find a cure for HIV.”
They provide a variety of Grants and funding oportunities and provide an updated list of COVID-19 & HIV Funding Opportunities from allied organisations.
“CREA is a feminist international human rights organization based in the Global South and led by women from the Global South. CREA’s work draws upon the inherent value of a rights-based approach to sexuality and gender equality. CREA promotes, protects, and advances human rights and the sexual rights of all people by building leadership capacities of activists and allies; strengthening organizations and social movements; creating and increasing access to new information, knowledge, and resources; and enabling supportive social and policy environments. Many resources are also in Bengali, Hindi, and Nepali. “
“ELAS Social Investment Fund (ELAS+) is the first independent fund that is dedicated to promoting and advancing the rights of girls and women in Brazil. “”ELAS transforms innovative ideas of thousandas of women from different ethnicities, races and sexual orientation into reality. ELAS launches “call of proposals” to select and support innovative projects of women’s groups working for women’s empowerment and rights.
We have built a pioneering methodology based on meritocracy where women’s groups and organizations use pseudonyms when submitting their proposals. We aim at brake a culture of favoritism and to ensure transparency. All groups and organizations selected participate in capacity building and dialogue meetings that promote knowledge and encourage the creation of joint strategies so its impact goes further.”””
Equality Fund robustly resources women’s rights organizations and feminist movements worldwide by partnering with organizations, coalitions, and networks focused on building power with women, girls, and trans people, especially in the Global South.
“Fondo Semillas is a non-profit feminist organization focused on improving women’s and trans* people lives in Mexico. We dream of a country where all women, indigenous, mestiza, black, young, migrant, heterosexual, lesbian, mothers, and students alike, can make their own decisions and have access to health services, education, a decent job, justice, and happiness.
To achieve this, Fondo Semillas:
* Mobilizes resources from institutional, corporate and individual donors, both in México and abroad.
* Works together with groups and organizations, providing them with financial resources, strengthening their capacities, and connecting them with other organizations, networks, and movements.
* Promotes and disseminates themes of the feminist agenda.
* Seeks to help organizations to carry out their work freely and safely, with a feminist perspective, even during emergencies.
* Establishes horizontal relationships with donors in order to achieve redistributive justice.”
Mama Cash is the host organisation for Red Umbrella Fund and in 2021 became the largest participatory grantmaker. “Courageous women’s, girls’, trans and intersex people’s human rights organisations worldwide need funding and supportive networks in order to grow and transform their communities. Mama Cash mobilises resources from individuals and institutions, makes grants to these self-led, feminist organisations, and helps to build the partnerships and networks needed to successfully defend and advance women’s, girls’, trans and intersex people’s human rights globally.”
The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. Open Society Foundation (OSF) is one of the funders that supported the formation of Red Umbrella Fund. “The Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, are the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. We provide thousands of grants every year through a network of national and regional foundations and offices, funding a vast array of projects—many of them now shaped by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.“
Red Umbrella Fund (RUF) is the first and only global fund dedicated to supporting the rights of sex workers. It was established in 2012 to respond to the lack of funding available for sex workers’ rights organising. In line with its core values of autonomy and ownership, Red Umbrella Fund is a sex worker-led, participatory fund.
“The SWGC is a cross-class, multi-racial, intergenerational giving circle made up of a group of Fellows with current or past experience with sex work or the sex trade. The Fellows make all high-level funding decisions and grantmaking recommendations, and lead many of our fundraising activities.”
“UHAI – EASHRI are philanthropic activists in a region where our identities as LGBTIQ+ people and as sex workers are criminalised through punitive laws, where governments actively shut down spaces for movement organising to end discrimination in access to services and healthcare, where societal and public opinion upholds exclusion from families, exclusion from faith communities and denial of basic rights such as access to dignified livelihoods, access to fair hearing and justice by law enforcement.”
