Empowering civil society and women’s rights organizations to ‘face the waves’
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“It is about adaptability, malleability, that organizations can move to be resilient and face the waves.” - grantee partner in South America
Throughout 2023, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) continued its wraparound service model for grantee partners.
Organizational resilience and adaptability
The UN Trust Fund’s focus on core, flexible and long-term funding has helped build the organizational resilience and adaptability of grantee partners. It provides them with stability and opportunities to mobilize further funding from other sources. The UN Trust Fund's support also includes dedicated self and collective care funds to improve the well-being of organization staff. In addition, grantee partners receive contingency and capacity-development budget allocations, within their grant, to cope with unexpected developments.
In 2023, despite the backlash against women’s rights, the compounding impacts of multiple crises and the complexity of operating environments, 70% of grantee partners reported in the UN Trust Fund’s Annual Partner Survey that they had noted improvements in organizational resilience and 75% had identified positive shifts in organizational adaptability. In addition, 74% said they could mobilize additional funding sources (totalling USD 18 million) for initiatives to end violence against women and girls.
Collective learning
Simultaneously, as a standard, the UN Trust Fund delivers a robust and comprehensive training package to all grantee partners via a webinar series and a handbook within the first three months of their project implementation. Identified as a best practice by independent auditors, in 2023, over 1,000 representatives from grantee partners attended 13 thematic webinars focused on, among other topics:
- programming principles related to ending violence against women and girls;
- project reporting;
- audit preparations;
- financial planning.
At least 70% of attendees said they used what they had learned and often went back to the webinars to ensure the best implementation of their initiatives.
In addition, the UN Trust Fund provides tailored technical and operational support for grantee partners throughout the three-year initiatives. This approach has proven successful in developing the organizational capacities of civil society and women’s rights organizations, who are now better equipped to design, manage and implement future initiatives.
Stay tuned!
Read the snapshots of 2023 in the run-up to the publication of the UN Trust Fund’s 2023 annual report: