Decolonising our practice

At Womankind, we are constantly learning, adapting and growing with humility as a feminist, anti-racist organisation working to decolonise our practice. This work underpins our strategy to 2030 and our vision of a feminist future.  Our fourth strategic goal is: Decolonise our practice

For over 30 years, we’ve worked at heart of the feminist movement. We are much more than an intermediary between donors and grassroots women’s rights organisations. We recognise our privilege and history as an organisation based in the Global North. We use our position to advocate for changes to policies and mobilise funds internationally, while championing and centring the priorities of our partners. 

Anti-racism is intrinsic to how we work. We are deepening and extending our decolonisation work, diversifying decision-making and reimagining power relationships & accountability.  

What does this look like in practice?   

As an organisation, we are deliberate on moving from paper to action by daring to confront our own structures, mindset, and blind spots. While we realise that this is a challenging journey, we are keen on embracing uncomfortable truths, having difficult conversations, and acknowledging our weaknesses as we forge on.    

The road to structural change is not a journey we can walk alone. We are working with experts, organisations and individuals who specialise in anti-racism and decolonisation, together navigating historical practices to dismantle racism. This requires constant learning and as a feminist organisation we have rolled out regular sessions to unpack topics around colonialism, racism, and true solidarity with the movement.  

Co-creation has been key in the execution of our anti-racism pledge together with staff, partners, and trustees. We have strived to ensure that the pledge is owned by everyone and captures our shared aspirations and vision.  

We have launched two flexible funds – Her Voice Fund and Movement Strengthening Fund to power grassroots movements. When it comes to our partners, we strive to share power and share risks, value partners’ expertise and together, build a decolonised, feminist future. 

In our policy and advocacy work, as feminist practice, we emphasise our support role. This includes sharing space and power intentionally when engaging and working alongside partners. For example, in the development of reports and research, flexible funding, how we provide programme and project support, how we show up to key policy and advocacy spaces such as CSW67, the African Commission on People and Human Rights (ACPHR) and Feminist Republik. 

We worked on developing and implementing a Funding Charter to ensure that our fundraising and our financing is anti-racist, shares power with partners rather than competing with them and that our fundraising materials don’t perpetuate stereotypes that portray people in the Global South as victims or without agency. For example we decided not to apply for a grant and encouraged our partners to apply directly so we wouldn’t be competing with them for funds and we worked to convince existing funders to move their project based giving towards flexible and long-term funding – so partners can decide how to use the funds. 

We will continue to re-evaluate and develop new ways of working that are more aligned with a transformative justice approach and feminist values. We hope that our decolonisation and anti-racism work over the coming years will enable us to be part of a movement towards systemic healing, justice and a more equitable world. Because as we know, there is no gender justice without racial justice.