Womanity Award
1 in 3 women worldwide has experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.*
We catalyse partnerships to end this cycle of violence against women and girls by collaborating with organisations in the Global South that raise awareness, mobilise communities, change social norms, and create safe public and private spaces for women and girls so they can be free of gender-based violence.
*Source: (WHO:2021)
HOW IT WORKS
Our model enables an organisation that has an innovative evidence-based approach to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) to increase their reach by adapting their project to a new country. They partner with an organisation based in this new location that brings knowledge and expertise of the context and its social norms. Over three years they collaborate to adapt and implement the tried-and-tested innovation to help prevent VAWG by leveraging the knowledge and experiences from the Global South.
TAXI DRIVERS SAFETIPIN TRAININGS, SOUTH AFRICA
Our Approach
Our 3-to-5 year programme is specifically designed to leverage strong, evidence-based ideas to end violence against women and girls. We do this through:
SUPPORT
We focus on small, emerging partners and support the adaptation and scale of innovative programmes across geographies in the Global South
FUND
We provide multi-year flexible funding for innovative programmes, and organisational development and self-care support for the organisations
CONNECT
We catalyse partnerships so organisations can learn from each other, and we amplify their voices in different platforms
Build transnational collaborations between women’s rights organisations
Contribute to decolonise development supporting South-to-South partnerships
Accelerate the dissemination of learning and of impactful practices and models
Strengthen trust-based funding practices challenging power imbalances in the field
Share evidence that prevention is possible to help bring more funding to the work
The Womanity Award’s unique model enables organisations fighting violence against women to adapt and scale proven innovative models with a local partner. The Award provides funding, capacity building and access to networks that enable the project’s impact to be leveraged and replicated.
Where we work
Our collaborations over the years
The Womanity Award has gone through 4 editions to date, each with a different focus:
award 4 (2022-2025)
Preventing domestic violence in Cape Verde
Who: Themis Gender Justice and Human Rights (Brazil) & Associação Cabo-Verdiana de Luta Contra Violência Baseada no Género (Cape Verde).
A Brazilian programme focused on legal empowerment is currently being adapted to Cape Verde. As part of ‘Say Yes to Women’ they are training women community leaders (called Women Multipliers of Citizenship) to build their legal awareness so they can support women in their communities and create partnership with the legal system to prevent domestic violence.
Impact: The goal is to train 60+ community women as agents of change; 120 women to be counselled to prevent the cycle of violence and to engage with key actors in the country to strengthen access to justice.
award 3 (2019-2022)
Safer public spaces for women in South Africa
Who: Safetipin (India) & Soul City Institute for Social Justice (South Africa)
Safetipin, a tech platform to create safe urban spaces for women and girls was adapted in the eThekwini municipality, on South Africa’s East coast.
Impact: Trained volunteers at civil society organisations to conduct safety audits of public spaces.
Worked with the government to integrate the data collected in the city to the municipality dashboard to inform their safe city strategy.
Created a guidebook to bring the programme to scale in other municipalities.
award 2 (2016-2019)
Tackling online gender-based violence in Mexico
Who: Association for Progressive Communications (South Africa) & a collective of organisations led by Luchadoras and La Sandía Digital (Mexico)
Take Back The Tech, was adapted in Mexico by creating strategies that enabled women to proactively respond to online abuse, claim virtual space and influence policies and practices.
Impact: Created digital storytelling workshops and mini-documentary series produced about online GBV; created online GVB typology that was shared globally and provided inputs to the UN Special Rapporteur on VAW.
Award 1 (2014-2017)
Engaging boys and men in Lebanon
Who: Equimundo (formerly Promundo) (Brazil) & ABAAD (Lebanon)
Program H from Brazil was adapted in Lebanon and renamed Program Ra. It encouraged boys and men to critically reflect about harmful gender norms and stereotypes.
Impact: 19 organisations were trained to deliver the programme, reaching 440 boys through 42 workshops across Lebanon.
Thanks to our Awardees
And our partner
“Being part of the Womanity Award has been a rich learning experience and a great challenge for our organisation. The possibility of working across the ocean with Africa and seeing such an important project in development is a huge achievement for Brazilian and Cape Verdean women.”
marcia soares
Executive Director, Themis