Rooted and Ready: A Mid-Year Reflection from Our Executive Director
As we reach the midpoint of 2025, I want to share a few reflections on what we’ve been doing, why it matters and where we’re heading.
Prospera is a network of Women and Feminist Funds working across the Global South and East to resource organisations that are transforming lives and addressing the most pressing community needs. In a time of intensifying injustice and ecological collapse, our members are modelling steadfastness, armed with a history of weathering overlapping crises, their work is not only the financial backbone of grassroots movements but also a lifeline, and their clarity, consistency, and deep-rooted care are the safeguards of hard-earned gains from decades of feminist struggle around the world.
Over the past few months, we’ve been doing the quiet, deliberate work of grounding ourselves: sharpening our Secretariat’s strategy, aligning our practices with our values, and making the difficult decisions that prepare us for the long road ahead. We’ve been asking hard questions, investing in our internal capacity, and setting bold plans into motion, because our movements deserve the clarity and accountability that lives up to their courage and vision.
At the same time, we continue to step forward, deliberately and strategically, into the world. We’re advocating for more and better resources in philanthropic and policy spaces, making the case that resourcing justice means resourcing those at the frontlines through mechanisms created by and for the movement. Our new advocacy strategy will reflect the collective strength of this network and ensure our members’ voices reach new spaces and unlock much-needed resources for the movement.
We are also expanding and refining our narrative, asserting that feminist movements are not a niche concern but central to global survival. That’s why we are embarking on an exciting new journey to gather and document the impact of feminist movements on the major issues shaping our lives and our planet and highlighting the unique role of Women and Feminist Funds in unlocking their full potential and matching financial resources with increased power, choice and freedom. We are also reviving our environmental thematic work and global engagement, continuing a legacy of organising at the intersection of some of the most pressing issues of our times.
One of my most cherished moments this year was sitting with our member funds at Prospera’s Africa and MENA regional meeting. After a full day of strategising and building, we sat together in a rare moment of quiet, fully aware of the historic burdens we carry and the new pressures brought onto us, and rather than the familiar panic we so often witness across the ecosystem, we sat with open hearts, deep-rooted trust, and the unshakable knowledge that we survive because we hold a kind of wealth and wisdom that does not shrink, it only grows.
It is with that certainty that I step into the second half of 2025, grateful to our members for their vision, perseverance and integrity and to all the partners and allies who are walking this journey with us.
In solidarity,
Laila Alodaat