Current Strategic Approach
Starting in 2006, Channel seeks to identify and provide grants to organizations or projects that specifically champion women's rights. The type of work we intend to sustain includes legal, legislative and policy advocacy; capacity, network and coalition building; human rights education, training and leadership development; and other innovative strategies.
Our overall strategy also includes efforts to:
- Participate in international, regional, and national networks of women's human rights activists and funders to make informed, collaborative, and strategic funding decisions.
- Promote exchange between Global South activists, educators and community leaders.
- Increase support for global women's human rights in the U.S. to encourage a connected and engaged citizenry and a stronger global movement.
- Ensure inclusion of women from historically marginalized communities on staff, board, and advisory networks of groups we support.
"I believe that oppression and cruelty against women will not end until women raise their voices against these things themselves. My slogan is 'End Oppression with Education.' In the light of dawn, mothers, sisters, and daughters will be recognized."
- Statement by Mukhtaran Bibi, Pakistani rape survivor who used the compensation money she was given by prosecuting her attackers to start schools in her village. Statement translated by Amna Buttar, viewed on the
International Women's Health Coalition website
Areas of Interest
In order to strengthen the global movement for women's human rights, we currently focus on the following six areas of interest:
- Ensuring Women's Participation in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
- Advancing Indigenous Women's Rights and Leadership
- Securing Reproductive Rights/Justice
- Overcoming Legal Inequality (Including Inheritance and Resource Rights)
- Ending Violence Against Women and Protecting Women Human Rights Defenders
- Promoting Media Reform and Gender Equity
For more information about our grants in these areas please see our Grantee Partners webpage.
Evaluation & Long Term Goals
Channel strives to document the ways women's organizations are achieving social change. Have they created a shift in how a problem is defined? Enabled community behavioral change? Engaged the wider public? Shifted policy or changed an institution? Have they managed to maintain rights in the face of opposition? Most importantly, are they embodying the change they hope to promote?
What We Do Not Fund
The Channel Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. New proposals are considered by invitation only.
In addition, we do not fund the following:
- Individuals (except through the Women's Leadership Scholarship)
- Service delivery projects
- Programs that promote religious beliefs
- Capital campaigns or electoral campaigns
