About Women’s Fund Asia

Women’s Fund Asia (WFA) is a regional fund committed to supporting the human rights of all women, girls, trans*, and intersex people in Asia. 

We began in 2004 as South Asia Women’s Fund to address the lack of resources for feminist organisations, especially for grassroots groups and organisations groups. In the last 20 years of resourcing feminist activism, WFA through its feminist grantmaking has committed over USD 30 million in grants to over 1600 initiatives led by women, girls, trans and intersex people across 22 countries and territories in Asia.

Our work closes the resource gap by creating sustainable, flexible resources and opportunities essential to supporting the leadership of women, girls, trans, and intersex people in bringing progressive change from within their communities. 

WFA covers two entities – Women’s Fund Asia and Women’s Fund Asia Limited (WFAL). WFAL is a subsidiary of WFA that helps manage risks and ongoing crises in the region. 

* “Trans” is used by WFA as a placeholder to cover a diversity of gender identities and forms of gender expressions claimed by people across the region and the world.

Our Mission

Our mission is to nurture and lead feminist philanthropy in the region; to effectively mobilise resources to support individuals, groups, and networks by enabling their sustainability; and to strengthen partner capacities, leadership, advocacy, and networks in the field.

Our Vision

Our vision is the realisation of the human rights of women, girls, trans, and intersex people in Asia.

We envision a peaceful and egalitarian region in which women, girls, trans, and intersex people’s participation, leadership, and enjoyment of all their human rights is ensured and secure.

Our core mandate is to support women, girls, trans, and intersex rights groups and activists in Asia, address the non-availability of resources for rights work for these constituencies across the region, and support strategies and interventions designed, implemented, and led by women, girls, trans, and intersex people. 

Our Values

Feminist

We are Feminist. We believe in agency, leadership, autonomy and decision-making and are committed to supporting interventions that advance rights of women, girls, trans, and intersex people.

Inclusive & Intersectional

We recognise a full range of identities, including but not limited to marginalised identities based on gender, sex, sexuality, age, caste, disability, minority identity, indigeneity, location, citizenship, health status and pregnancy status, amongst others. We invest organisational resources to support learning approaches that are inclusive to these ways of being.  

Flexible

As a women’s fund, we strive to be flexible, aware of the challenges and difficulties of working on the ground. Acknowledging that the work that we support is a long term commitment, we make ‘core funding’ available to our grassroots level partners to ensure their strengthening and sustainability.

Rights Based

We are committed to supporting rights based initiatives that allow women, girls, trans, and intersex people to have a voice in key decisions that affect their lives and lead solutions for transformational change. We believe in substantive equality and non-discrimination, and that States have an obligation beyond simply passing legislation on equality, and encourage our partners to use existing frameworks such as CEDAW to hold their States accountable.

Collaborative

We believe in the spirit of alliance building and fostering partnerships with our peer networks, grantee partners, and donors continuously.

Transparent

We strive to be transparent in the way we conduct our grantmaking and resource mobilisation, as well as our administrative and governance processes, without compromising on the confidentiality of our partners.

Accountable

We are committed to being accountable to the community of people we work with including our grantee partners, donors as well as the larger human rights movements.

Where We Work

WFA works in 22 countries and territories across South, East, and Southeast Asia. 

South Asia:

  • Bangladesh
  • Bhutan
  • India
  • Maldives
  • Nepal
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka

East Asia:

  • Hong Kong
  • Mongolia
  • Taiwan
  • South Korea

Southeast Asia:

  • Cambodia
  • Indonesia
  • Lao PDR
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • Thailand
  • Timor-Leste
  • Vietnam

Since 2004, Women’s Fund Asia has resourced over 1600 initiatives in the region, advancing gender equality and non-discrimination for all women, girls, trans, and intersex people.

Women’s Fund Asia

Strategic Plan 2022-2027

WFA’s Strategic Plan 2022-27 builds on the organisation’s decades-long practice of feminist grantmaking in the region; to refresh and sharpen its programming towards a collective direction and commitment; as well as strengthen and deepen its learnings and insights encouraging big-picture thinking.

Learn More

In 2020, Women’s Fund Asia Limited (WFAL) was registered as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee in Australia with registration under the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission. WFAL  is a subsidiary of WFA, and its operations are controlled by WFA. WFA is the sole member of the Company. The  Executive Director of WFA serves as its Executive head, with the responsibility of making it fully operational in a way to serve the mandate of WFA. 

WFA Linktree
Contact

info@wf-asia.org | grants@wf-asia.org

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