BLOG: Founding Investors Commit to Generation Equality Forum through the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains

As the world looks towards Paris for today’s start of the Generation Equality Forum (GEF),  a powerhouse coalition of NGOs and corporate investors have made a joint commitment to the GEF through the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains.

The Resilience Fund is an innovative pooled funding initiative for corporations, corporate foundations, and private foundations to invest in the long-term health, well-being, and economic resilience of women who form the backbone of global value chains. This commitment represents more than $4 million, with a Fund goal of raising more than $10 million over the next three years.

By centering the voices, ideas, and expertise of women in identifying solutions for systemic change, fund partners seek to combat gender-based violence and promote sexual and reproductive health and rights—both essential issues for building women’s economic resilience in supply chain communities around the world. 

Convened by UN Women and hosted by the Government of France, the GEF is galvanizing a diverse array of multi-sectoral actors and advocates around the need to accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 5, which pertains to achieving gender equality for everyone, everywhere. 

“Feminist and women-led organizations know best what communities need in the way of solutions, as the pandemic laid bare the systemic inequities that hit women, especially marginalized women, the hardest,” says Seema Jalan, executive director of the Universal Access Project. “The Fund represents a new, collective commitment by its founding partners and investors to the Generation Equality Forum, and specifically to accelerating progress towards SDG 5 through investing in local, feminist leadership and organizing; shared governance; and learning, transparency and accountability.”

The Fund was developed jointly by BSR, the United Nations Foundation’s Universal Access Project, and Women Win/Win-Win Strategies in close collaboration with founding corporate partners and investors Gap Foundation, PVH Foundation, H&M Foundation, The VF Foundation, and the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation. Its democratic and representative Advisory Board includes leaders from the Global Fund for Women, Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds, the Naz Foundation (India) Trust, and Women’s Fund Asia.