Dear FRIDA Community and Friends,
I am grateful for the opportunity to share a few minutes of your time, especially as time feels so constrained these days. We are inundated with an overwhelming amount of information, harsh realities, and the devastating effects of violent global policies, along with the inhumane and often unseen consequences of the implementation of these policies. While it may seem impossible to navigate this storm of information and realities, our current times compel us to remain rooted in solidarity, care for ourselves and each other, and to organise in good trouble.
This truth is equally applicable to our internal reality at FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund. Throughout my first year as Interim Executive Director, FRIDA has continued to advance boldly through seemingly impossible circumstances while steadfastly committed to our advocacy and mission of incubating and sustaining young feminist movements globally.
This year, challenging circumstances persist as we remain vigilant to both the visible and not-yet-visible consequences stemming from USAID funding cuts. We have heard directly from our program focal points, advisors, and grantee partners about the severe effects that the communities we support are experiencing due to these aid cuts. Some of these devastating impacts include the closure of life-saving programmes, gender-affirming initiatives, the shutdown of shelters for young women and girls, and the rapid rollback and increased violent oppression of LGBTQ+ people, and trans communities in particular, which has resulted in significant gaps in community care infrastructures. More broadly, we observe that many organisations are being compelled to confront a restructuring process immediately or to face it in the future; in severe cases, organisations are having to shut down completely. Last year, due to similar circumstances of profound funding losses, FRIDA underwent a challenging restructuring. While the decision to restructure FRIDA last year was difficult, it was also necessary to uphold our commitment to our grantee partners, who, with FRIDA’s support, carry on the mission-critical task of advancing and advocating for young feminist futures.
Despite the challenging decisions we faced as an organisation, I am proud to report that FRIDA not only upheld its commitment to our internal grant-making policy last year by maintaining all our programs and our commitment to key strategies on trans* organising, climate and environmental justice, and teenage girls but also retained all our grantee partners alongside our funding commitments to them. In total, in 2024, FRIDA supported 203 grantee partners across 101 countries through our direct grant-making support of $2,862,550. Throughout this period of significant organisational restructuring, and since joining FRIDA, I have witnessed firsthand the dedication of the FRIDA staff, who continue to advocate resolutely for the comprehensive support and nurturing of young feminist visions. I would like to thank the entire FRIDA team and the Board of Directors for their care, support, commitment, and perseverance over the past year.
This is why FRIDA has remained committed for over 15 years to go beyond grantmaking, as we recognise that simply moving money is not enough. As an organisation, we are dedicated to nurturing and sustaining young feminist movements globally. Over FRIDA’s 15 years of existence, we have channelled nearly $20.7 million in direct grant-making to 435 grantee partners across 131 countries and produced numerous tools – Our Garden of Change, Our Storms of Solidarity and all of our publications and resources that we continue to share from our Collective Care Advocacy Tool, Money and Feminisms, WESCA Toolkit for LGBTQI+ organisers, Reflections on our Participatory Grantmaking Practice, our core policies, FRIDA’s Trans Strategy, What the Water Brings – reflections on our CEJ work, and much more – as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting and resourcing young feminist futures. In this 15th year, we continue FRIDA’s transparent and evolving organisational journey, which consistently confronts and addresses challenges directly.
These 15 years of FRIDA have reaffirmed for us as an organisation that our work is more vital than ever in directly addressing the alarmingly prevalent anti-rights and anti-gender movements that impact so many within our community. We continue to advocate for the nurturing and sustaining of young feminist ecosystems because, while the world continues to learn from (and, in some cases, extract from) the visions of young feminists, the support of young feminists globally in a manner that promotes intersectional community-led grantmaking remains critical.
Throughout this year, you will hear directly from the FRIDA team, who will share the transformative work they have been engaged in over the past few years. You will read an in-depth analysis of our participatory grant-making model and our newly envisioned grantee partner journey, shaped by 15 years of learning beyond our grant-making efforts. We will discuss FRIDA’s internal work and our commitment to fostering spaces for practice and communal mesh-building to support the vibrancy of our team. Most importantly, you will hear directly from our grantee partners and advisors (while maintaining our commitment to uphold their safety and security in increasingly oppressive times) about their experiences as members of the FRIDA community and their visions for FRIDA’s future.
In our 10th-year celebrations, we held FRIDA’s first-ever intergenerational dialogue with our founding members, first coordinators, and the FRIDA community. We continue the participatory nature of our celebrations and invite you to celebrate with us as we mark 15 years of FRIDA and our grantee partners by sharing your story of a FRIDA memory and/or by supporting the resourcing of young feminists by donating to FRIDA and joining us in our long-standing commitment to young feminist movements across the globe.
Thank you for your support and community. At FRIDA, we move forward in principled solidarity with our grantee partners, renewed in our commitment to nurturing and sustaining bold young feminist visions globally. We do this with love and care for ourselves and one another.
With Gratitude and In Community,
Uma Mishra
Interim Executive Director
FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund
