Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership (RWVL) Bangladesh

This project is part of Canada’s Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership (RWVL) Program. It supports local and regional women’s rights organizations (WROs) gender-diverse groups and feminist networks working to promote the rights of women and girls and advance gender equality globally. It provides multi-year core funding and rapid responsive funding strengthens institutional capacity and bolsters feminist movements as WROs and feminist movements are critical change agents. The Program continues to respond to the globally recognized and significant gap in funding and support for WROs and feminist movements worldwide. It includes enhanced support for WROs gender-diverse organizations and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) working in crisis- and conflict-affected settings and a more intentional approach to reaching structurally excluded groups. The Manusher Jonno Foundation a Bangladeshi non-governmental organization implements this project on a national scale reaching approximately 70 000 women and girls directly and 130 000 indirectly. It targets diverse groups including indigenous women; women from occupational casts such as fisherfolk gypsy women tea garden workers sex workers; gender-diverse populations; and ethnic minority women. Building on successes and lessons learned this project scales up outreach activities supports mass advocacy campaigns and strengthens the operations of 20 to 25 women’s rights organizations across Bangladesh.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) enhanced organizational capacity resilience and sustainability of local WROs and gender-diverse groups to advance their gender equality mandates in Bangladesh; (2) strengthened programming and advocacy of local WROs gender-diverse groups and WRHDs to advance gender equality and empower women and girls in Bangladesh; and (3) increased effectiveness of sub-national national regional and global women’s rights platforms networks and alliances to affect policy legal and social change in Bangladesh.