South Asia Women Foundation India (SAWF IN) is a women’s fund in India and works with the mandate of resourcing women and trans* persons-led initiatives for advancing their rights and empowerment. Her mandate draws from the need to support movements and actions focused on gender equality and non-discrimination. SAWF IN supports movements and organisations promoting the agenda of social and economic justice. As a women’s fund we are committed to enhancing the flow of resources to women and trans person-led organisations for their priorities and claims in pursuit of gender justice.

What we do:

1. Build a case for increasing the philanthropic flow towards gender transformative agendas
2. Offer accompaniment support to organisations and strengthen the intentional use of an inclusive, gender transformative lens in programme design, implementation, and evidence gathering   
3. Provide direct support to under-resourced, grassroots women-led organisations and collectives through grants and fellowships
4. Offer advisory insights related to partner identification and outreach

The key strategies adopted by SAWF IN to realize her purpose include:

A)     Influencing the flow of resources toward gender transformative initiatives

B)     Grant-making and fellowships

C)     Research and knowledge creation that amplifies the funding needs of organisations working to end inequality

D)     Creating critical spaces for funders, implementers, and movement actors to reflect on setting priorities that need support.

Through our small grants and fellowship programmes, we are committed to supporting women and trans-people-led organisations, working to:

a)     Advance economic leadership of women and gender nonbinary people from marginalise sections of society
b)     Build their leadership to address gender-based discrimination and inequality.

SAWF IN has disbursed INR 89,92,726 towards fellowships and grants in the last five years (2017-2022). We have supported nineteen partners in pursuing sustainable economic models, building skills in feminist lawyering, ensuring the access of women from marginalised backgrounds to justice and constitutional rights, and strengthening women-led responses to violence against women and girls. We are also technical advisors to our sister fund in the region, Women’s Fund Asia, on designing and identifying partners for strengthening intersectional programmes that advance women’s access to justice along with building their economic resilience.

Corporate India is committed to advancing SDG's and to reducing inequality, building a socially just society. SAWF IN's work resonates deeply with this goal. We are a preffered partner for corporate organisations because:

1. We have a network of credible partnerships consisting of effective women’ led organisations working on improving the economic status of women and trans persons from dalit, Adivasi and other marginalised communities.

2. Our grant making process is ethical, transparent and empowering. We follow a rigorous process for due diligence, which is part of our institutional guidelines.

3. We maintain a strong focus on measuring results and developing change stories to show case how the grant is making a difference to the communities it is serving.   

4. We also invest in understanding the capability building needs of groups working at the grassroots, and apart from grants and fellowships also offer them accompaniment support where needed. This means our staff provide training and capacity building on a  range of issues such as gender integration, monitoring and evaluation as well as capturing stories of change.  

5. We believe in ‘engaged philanthropy’ such that employee engagement activities can become a mutually beneficial process of learning. 

6. We make a conscious effort on leadership development of women in every project.