Dear colleagues and friends,
As this year comes to a close, we are grateful for being in community with all of you.
Within the Prospera network, we are particularly proud of our exponential growth over the last decade, where we surpassed 1 Billion USD to women’s and feminist groups, activists, organizations, and movements for the period of 2012-2022. Although this is the amount that should go to our constituencies annually according to the Shake the Table report, we are nonetheless celebrating the heightened resource mobilization capacity of our membership and their collective action to support gender justice in the Global South and East.
For Prospera, 2023 has been a year of new beginnings as we start to implement our bold, collective vision for the next decade and that was the result of a fully participatory and feminist process. As exciting as this moment has been for us, we have also enjoyed reconnecting with feminist funders and movements throughout the year by participating in collective spaces in Women Deliver, Global Summit of Collaborative Funds, UNGA, Climate Week, the African Philanthropy Forum, the African Philanthropy Conference, the Women’s Funding Network Biennial, Wings Forum, EDGE Conference, Feminist Foreign Policy Conference, Shift the Power Summit and the AVPN Summit, we recognize that the world is transforming as we speak. The aftermath of the COVID pandemic, the rise of authoritarian, right-wing, militarization and fascism around the globe -most recently in Europe-, mounting financial and legal restrictions on civil society, and an increasing climate crisis are just some of the trends that threaten humanity. The rise in anti-gender and anti-rights forces requires immediate and bold action from private philanthropy, and we are proud that Prospera members’ On The Right Track Initiative is one of the leading alliances working with communities on countering fundamentalisms in Latin America and Europe. The resourcing of feminist movements supported by consortiums such as Leading From the South, the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), and the Urgent Action Funds Sisterhood are also increasingly showing how funding communities based in the Global South and East are crucial to provide resources in ways that are relevant, rapid, and responsive to the needs and contexts of groups.
Throughout multiple crises and devastation from Ukraine to Armenia and from Sudan to Palestine and Israel, the Prospera network has a renewed sense of collective power and unstoppable will to transform the flow of resources to reach diverse activists fighting for human rights, equality, and justice for all. We know that we are stronger because we are together. As the global network of women’s and feminist funds, we are creating new and collective strategies to have greater impact in philanthropy, development aid, and feminist foreign policy.
We are excited to begin our “Friends of Prospera” alliance next year. Through this alliance we are looking to partner with funding organizations and actors that are resourcing social movements and marginalized communities all over the world and with whom we hope to strategize and collaborate in the coming years to create collective responses to the poly-crises of our times.
Prospera is also looking forward to holding two milestones next year- the Gender and Climate Justice Summit– together with our long-time partner Global Greengrants Fund, and Prospera’s XIII Biennial. Both will take place at the end of September and early October in 2024 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. We will bring together feminist, environmental, and human rights funders, activists, and organizations together to collectively strategize for the years to come, paying particular attention to the UNFCCC CoP to be held in Belem do Para, Brazil, in 2025. We are excited to bring our communities together and ignite the crucial political will and financial commitments needed to continue building a world that is in harmony with people and the planet. We invite you to join us.
Wishing you all radical rest and peace as we enter a new year,
Alexandra Garita
Executive Director
Prospera – INWF
Our Strategic Framing for the next decade!
In 2022, Prospera’s fund members alongside the network’s Board and secretariat team, dedicated a full year to collectively build our strategic framework for the next decade.
Prospera’s strategic framework was devised to embody our collective power. It served not only as a profound strategic visioning process but also as an opportunity to explore how to conduct strategic planning for a diverse and complex network like Prospera in a feminist and participatory manner.
More here