Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee Selected by Melinda French Gates to Distribute $20 Million for Women's Rights
Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Laureate, has been selected by Melinda French Gates to receive a $20 million grantmaking fund to distribute to charitable organizations and grassroots leaders doing vital and groundbreaking work for women's health and well-being in the U.S. and worldwide.
The grant will provide Gbowee with flexible funding to give out to charitable organizations as part of a powerful shift in French Gates’ global grantmaking. With this announcement, French Gates aims to open the sphere of philanthropic grantmaking and expand the reach of key perspectives by extending who gets to be decision-makers in philanthropic grantmaking to advance women's rights around the globe.
“I’m pursuing new approaches to help broaden the circle of decision-makers in philanthropy,” says French Gates. “I recently offered 12 global leaders their own $20 million grant-making funds to distribute to charitable organizations they consider to be doing urgent, impactful, and innovative work to improve women’s health and well-being in the U.S. and around the world.”
As one of the twelve global leaders whose work French Gates admires, Gbowee joins other notable recipients including former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, Olympic athlete and Black maternal health advocate Allyson Felix, and Afghan girls' education champion Shabana Basij-Rasikh, among others.
Gbowee a renowned peace activist, trained social worker, and women's rights advocate, says, “This is a wonderful chance to supercharge important work being championed by grassroots organizations advancing women’s health and well-being around the globe. I have seen first-hand the impact we can have by investing in the voices, leadership and movement-building capacity of women. I am honored that Melinda invited me to partner with her in this way and stand ready to see the good we can, and must, do in these urgent times.”
As part of her announcement on May 28, French Gates stated that as the first step in the next chapter of her philanthropy, she is committing 1 billion dollars of additional funding through 2026 to advance women’s power globally. This commitment will include:
Grants aimed at supercharging the work of organizations that are fighting in the U.S. to advance women’s power and protect their rights, including reproductive freedom.
Partnering with a diverse group of global leaders who will each be provided with a $20 million fund to distribute to charitable organizations doing urgent, impactful, and innovative work to improve women’s health and well-being in the US and around the world.
An open call, launching later this fall, to identify and fund organizations working to improve women’s mental and physical health worldwide.
Bio: Leymah Gbowee is a peace activist, trained social worker, and women’s rights advocate who brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war. She is the founder and president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa and executive director of the Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace.
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