Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership–Ukraine

Implementation period:

2025–2030

Regions:

All regions of Ukraine

Target audience:

Women’s/feminist organizations, networks, and platforms working to advance the human rights of women and girls, particularly those from structurally excluded groups, including conflict-affected women and internally displaced women; women with disabilities; women of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities; Roma women and women from other ethnic minorities; rural women; women with low incomes; and older women. Women’s/feminist organizations are key agents of change. The project supports their activities and institutional capacity development, as well as the development of networks and partnerships.

About the project:

“Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership–Ukraine” is a five-year project that aims to advance gender equality and the human rights of women and girls through support for women’s rights organizations, groups of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LBTIQ+) people, activists, and the wider women’s/feminist movement in Ukraine.

The project builds on the achievements of “Women’s Voice and Leadership–Ukraine,” the previous five-year initiative that supported the development of the feminist movement in Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the resulting humanitarian crisis have undermined some of the women’s movement’s achievements, making continued support for women’s rights and gender equality particularly important.

The project’s ultimate outcome is to strengthen the realization of the rights of women and girls in all their diversity and advance gender equality in Ukraine.

Project Activities

• Engaging with established and newly established women’s/feminist organizations and supporting them in addressing both ongoing and emerging challenges.
• Providing institutional capacity-building support and grant funding to women’s/feminist civil society organizations, including multi-year grants, grants for newly established organizations, travel grants, and fast responsive grants.
• Providing leadership training and mentoring; conducting advocacy campaigns; and facilitating knowledge-sharing and coordination among women’s/feminist organizations across all regions of Ukraine, with a particular focus on conflict-affected regions and communities hosting large numbers of internally displaced women.
• Supporting research and analysis of the women’s/feminist movement and its members, taking into account different regional contexts and the challenges faced by women’s rights organizations and women in all their diversity. Project activities are adapted to address these needs.

Key Principles of Project Implementation

The project is grounded in feminist principles, including a gender-transformative approach, intersectionality, local leadership, and flexibility. It follows a collective approach (“a movement for the movement”) to defining project strategies, setting priorities, and building networks and alliances.

Project objectives:

• 1. Support the feminist organizational development and sustainability of women’s/feminist civil society organizations, particularly those representing structurally excluded women and girls who experience multiple forms of discrimination.
• 2. Strengthen the programming and advocacy of women’s/feminist civil society organizations through the development and implementation of local, community-level, and national initiatives to advance gender equality and the human rights of women and girls.
• 3. Enhance the effectiveness of national and local women’s/feminist networks, coalitions, and platforms to influence policy, legal, and social change and advance gender equality in Ukraine.