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International Midwife Assistance (IMA)

IMA offers general medical care, prenatal, vaccination, family planning services and a birth center, to help the poorest of the poor in the Teso region of Uganda.

IMA midwives train local practitioners provide quality prenatal and birth services, as well as general medical care, to increasing numbers of women and children from surrounding poor communities. Through these services, women receive the assistance they need to help ensure safe, healthy pregnancies. The clinic staff also conducts weekly mobile outreach clinics to remote rural areas.

Our birth center allows us to offer special assistance to women during childbirth, increasing the capacity to ensure safe delivery and quick and efficient response to complications during childbirth. Feasible low-cost health interventions are all that is needed to save countless lives of women and babies in Uganda.

For more information, visit
www.midwifeassist.org

International Midwife Assistance and
BoldeReach are 501(c)(3)
non-profit organizations

GALA TICKETS

Urgent Action Fund for
Women's Human Rights

UAF History

The Need

Urgent Action Fund was founded in 1997, following the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.  The co-founders, Ariane Brunet, Margaret (Mudge) Schink and Julie Shaw, identified a severe gap between activists' needs in the face of crises or unexpected opportunities and the resources available to them, especially in areas experiencing armed conflict or escalating violence.  Most donors required several months to process a grant request, but many interventions had only a small window of opportunity in which they could be effective.

The Response

Thus, the idea of Rapid Response Grantmaking was born. Eighty activists and donors from around the world provided input that enabled UAF's founders to design this unique and strategic philanthropic model. Their input created the UAF core grantmaking categories, which are even more relevant today than at our founding.

The Action

UAF's co-founders presented this groundbreaking Rapid Response Grantmaking model to a small group of women philanthropists in California, who all made a gift right then and there, and Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights was born.  We made our first grant within the week and haven't slowed down since!

Activist Leadership

As a human rights funder guided by feminist principles, UAF is led and strengthened by an activist Board of Directors.  While our headquarters is in the United States, our leaders represent activist communities from around the world. Their leadership and expertise ensure that UAF's decision-making stays in the hands of activists and is grounded in an international, feminist framework.

Regional Growth

By 2001, a significant portion of UAF's Rapid Response Grants were going to women's rights groups in conflict-affected areas of Africa. UAF consulted with activists throughout Africa, and the Board decided to establish a local presence in Nairobi, Kenya to provide more strategic and informed support to women activists throughout the continent.  Kaari Betty Murungi, a Kenyan lawyer and former UAF Board member, is the Director and co-founder of Urgent Action Fund-Africa.  In 2005, UAF-Africa became the second independent African women's fund serving the continent and the first women's fund in Kenya.

UAF BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Pictured (l to r)

Chela Blitt, Rachel Wareham, Anissa Hélie, Sunila Abeysekera, Julie Shaw, Rita Thapa, Eleanor Douglas

Not Pictured

Jelena Djordjevic, Amalia Fischer

SUNILA ABEYSEKERA

Sri Lanka

Executive Director of INFORM, a leading Sri Lankan human rights organization, Ms. Abeysekera is a founding member of the Women's Fund for Tsunami Relief and Reconstruction (established in 2005). In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ms. Abeysekera received the United Nations Human Rights Award from Secretary-General Kofi Annan for her outstanding contribution to women’s rights and human rights. She was among the few members of the majority Sinhala community who established direct contact with Tamil women in the North and East of Sri Lanka after the outbreak of ethnic conflict in 1983.  Her publications include: Organising for Peace in the Midst of War: Experiences of Women in Sri Lanka, Women and the Media in Sri Lanka:  The Decade from Nairobi to Beijing, and Women's Human Rights: Questions of Equality and Difference.

CHELA BLITT, Treasurer

USA

A media producer specializing in international and women’s issues, Ms. Blitt’s award-winning video, Sisters and Daughters Betrayed, documents the global trafficking of women and children. Co-founder and producer of Undercurrents, a daily investigative radio program broadcast nationally in the United States, Ms. Blitt is also a founding donor of the Urgent Action Fund and is active in the U.S. philanthropic movement.

JELENA DJORDJEVIC

Serbia

Ms. Djordjevic is a feminist activist working on the prevention of violence against women and trafficking in the Balkan region. She is also active in the area of sexual rights through her involvement with the Network of Sex Work Projects and International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe.  Currently Ms. Djordjevic stands as deputy director of the Anti Trafficking Center in Belgrade, Serbia.  She co-authored UAF’s forthcoming publication on sustaining activism: What’s the Point of Revolution If We Can’t Dance? andholds a Masters Degree in Migration Studies from the Sussex University in United Kingdom.

ELEANOR DOUGLAS, Chair

Canada/ Colombia

Ms. Douglas lives in Bogotá, Colombia and works as a researcher for Save the Children Canada and its programs in Latin America.  She is developing a database and working with young men and women to increase understanding of, and pedagogical tools related to, issues of masculinity, the socialization of boys, and the causes of increasing violence against girls and women by boys and men.  In addition, she is developing analytical and practical materials concerning the importance of the participation and the contribution of girls, boys, and young people, living in a context of protracted armed conflict, to processes of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Reconciliation, as well as the role of Memory in young peoples' lives.

AMALIA FISCHER

Brazil

Ms. Fischer is a co-founder and executive director of the Angela Borba Fund for Women based in Rio de Janeiro. A Mexican-Nicaraguan and feminist activist since 1975, she founded the Angela Borba Fund in 2001 with nine other women to raise awareness of women’s contributions to society and women’s issues while changing patterns of traditional philanthropic giving. She is working to modernize the culture of philanthropy and social investment in Brazil, with the goal of transforming people’s “hand-out” mentality on giving into a deeper understanding about the importance of investing in diversity and transforming gender relations.  Ms. Fischer has a PhD in Communication and Culture, and was a professor at the Faculty of Political Science at  the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for 20 years. Ms. Fischer is also an Ashoka and Synergos Fellow and member of the Board of Grantmakers without Borders.

ANISSA HÉLIE

Algeria/ France

Currently the recipient of a Ford Foundation teaching fellowship at the Five College Women’s Studies Center, Massachusetts, USA, Ms. Hélie is the former Executive Director of the International Coordination Office of Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She has been closely involved with the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat, the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice, the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights and the Women’s Research and Action Group. Ms. Hélie is a frequent lecturer on issues related to women’s rights in Muslim countries/communities. Her publications include: Documenting Women’s Rights Violations by Non-State Actors: Activist Strategies from Muslim Communities and Holy Hatred – Penalties for Homosexuality in Muslim Countries and Communities.

JULIE SHAW, Executive Director & Co-Founder

USA

Ms. Shaw is the co-founder and executive director of Urgent Action Fund.  She is a veteran activist in the fields of philanthropy, environmental justice and women’s human rights.  Prior to co-founding UAF, Ms. Shaw was Senior Program Manager of The Global Fund for Women, where she worked in all aspects of the foundation and coordinated the first Donor Circle Against Sex Trafficking.  Ms. Shaw also has undertaken policy-related work concerning women criminal offenders in the U.S. and as committee staff for the U.S. Senate.

RITA THAPA, Vice Chair

Nepal

Ms. Thapa is a feminist educator and community activist initiating and supporting institutions addressing women’s empowerment in Nepal, South Asia and globally. Widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in founding Tewa, the Nepal Women’s Fund, Ms. Thapa is also the founder of Nagarik Aawaz, an initiative for conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Nepal, and the Dhaka Weaves women’s weaving collective. Ms. Thapa is an Ashoka Fellow and was the Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitor (2002) at the University of Toronto.

RACHEL WAREHAM, Secretary

Afghanistan/ United Kingdom

Ms Wareham is currently working as a consultant on gender in post conflict contexts. She spent substantial amount of time as Gender Advisor on Mainstreaming for the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), in Kabul, Afghanistan, and as Head of Mission and Women’s Rights Lobby Worker or Medica Mondiale in Kabul, Afghanistan. Prior to her assignment in Afghanistan, Ms. Wareham worked for eight years with the Center for Women War Victims in Croatia and Motrat Qiriazi, a rural women’s group in Kosova.