awdf

Partnership Spotlight: African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)

Advancing the Rights, Health, and Resilience of Women and Girls

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) has been a critical strategic partner in strengthening MOYOTE’s work to advance gender equality, protect the rights of women and girls, and build resilient communities. Through AWDF’s robust financial and strategic support, MOYOTE successfully implemented transformative initiatives empowering adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), strengthening survivor-centered services, and amplifying community-led advocacy.

What We Did

The projects funded by AWDF focused on comprehensive, grassroots support across multiple initiatives:

• Implemented the “Enhancing the Resilience and Wellbeing of Girls and Young Women Living with and at Risk of HIV” project in the Korogocho Informal Settlement to combat the severe social and economic challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Provided psychosocial support, vocational training (in hairdressing, tailoring, baking, art, and welding), entrepreneurship and digital marketing skills, and direct seed grants to help young women rebuild their livelihoods.

• Launched the “Empowering Adolescent Girls and Young Women to Claim Their Rights, Speak Up, and Report Cases of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)” project to address the femicide and GBV crisis.

• Provided emergency shelter, security, and specialized psychosocial support for survivors of physical, sexual, psychological, and economic violence.

• Fostered community-led feminist action through the For Us By Us (FUBU) and Sister-to-Sister initiatives, creating safe spaces for healing, leadership, and solidarity among women and girls.

• Mobilized communities using art, culture, and puppetry outreach to proactively raise awareness about gender-based violence (GBV) and shift harmful social norms in identified hotspots.

• Supported the development, launch, and dissemination of an advocacy position paper to influence gender-responsive recovery policies and ensure AGYW participation in local decision-making.

Key Achievements

Through the AWDF partnership, MOYOTE has achieved the following vital milestones:

• Reached more than 5,000 women, adolescent girls, and young people with integrated services and rights-based programming.

• Established and operated the MOYOTE Safe Shelter, providing life-saving emergency accommodation, counseling, referrals, and protection for survivors. In one reporting period alone, the shelter rescued 66 survivors, while another earlier phase rescued 37 women and girls.

• Successfully supported 39 survivors of gender-based violence to access the legal system and hold perpetrators accountable, with 17 cases fully concluded and 22 ongoing in court.

• Empowered women survivors with seed capital; several of these women gained total economic independence, formed table-banking groups, and secured larger microfinance loans to expand their businesses.

• Trained equality champions to sensitize the community on gender equality, embedding long-term resources for SGBV advocacy directly within the community.

• Had a project abstract titled “Sustainable and inclusive services in cases of gender-based violence against women and girls” officially accepted and recognized by the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF).

Lasting Impact

Our partnership with AWDF clearly demonstrates the transformative power of investing in grassroots feminist organizations. The support fundamentally enabled participants to stabilize their mental wellbeing, drastically improve their economic resilience, and gain the confidence required to aggressively advocate for their own rights. It successfully shifted the community’s response to GBV by uniting local stakeholders and dramatically reducing the reliance on informal “kangaroo courts”. Together, AWDF and MOYOTE continue to build safer communities where women and girls can live free from violence, explicitly exercise their rights, and thrive with dignity