Dear Friends,
From all of us at Women Moving Millions, we wish you a Happy International Women’s Day! Today we celebrate those champions of equality who stand up and #ChooseToChallenge the systemic inequities and gender and racial biases that continue to impede progress towards a gender equal world.
While we pause to honor all that we’ve achieved in the movement for gender equality, we find ourselves at an important inflection point in this work. The COVID-19 crisis shone a light on and intensified the inequalities women and girls face worldwide, threatening to reverse the advances made to improve their safety, health, and economic opportunity.
At Women Moving Millions, we are challenging ourselves to reflect upon this past year’s lessons and how they can inform our post-pandemic future. What will we bring forward? What must we shed? How can philanthropy partner to design a future that is more inclusive, compassionate, and equal? One thing seems increasingly clear; “we are not building back but building forward.” This effort will require the combined wisdom, leadership, and action of movement leaders, advocates, policymakers, and the private sector to propel us toward a more gender equal future.
As the largest philanthropic community of more than 340 individuals giving $1 million or more to resource women and girls, mobilizing more than $800 million to date, we are committed to listening and learning from those changemakers and leaders who are closest to the problems we seek to solve, challenging ourselves to be better philanthropists. We are committed to working together, in partnership, to leverage our collective strength, networks, and voice to overcome one of the greatest barriers to equality: access to capital.
This spring, UN Women and co-host governments of Mexico and France, will convene governments, activists, corporations, feminist organizations, youth, and allies to define and announce ambitious gender equality investments and policies. Kicking off in Mexico City, Mexico, on March 29–31, 2021, and culminating in Paris, France in June 2021, this landmark effort, titled the Generation Equality Forum, will be a rallying point to secure a set of concrete, transformative commitments to achieve immediate and irreversible progress towards gender equality by 2030.
Alongside and in support of this global effort, Women Moving Millions launched our Give Bold, Get Equal Campaign to mobilize more than $100 million in support of this bold feminist agenda. In addition, we will host a four-part series, in partnership with the UN Foundation, with some of the world’s most influential leaders, policymakers, advocates, and philanthropists working to advance gender equality.
Together, we can meet this moment and leverage our collective energies to help ensure women and girls move from crisis to recovery to thriving. Together, we are more powerful.
In partnership,
Sarah
Sarah Haacke Byrd
Executive Director
Women Moving Millions
