Global Fund for Women Receives $500,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

PALO ALTO, California -- The Global Fund for Women, the nation's only nonprofit organization exclusively supporting women's human rights organizations overseas, will expand its grantmaking program with a $500,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will be awarded over the next two years.

"The support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will allow the Global Fund for Women to significantly increase our support of groups working to improve the health of women and children, which we believe is a fundamental human right," explained Kavita N. Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women.

"This award reflects an understanding that small, flexible, general support grants can be an effective way to strengthen nonprofit groups abroad, especially women-led organizations, which are often catalysts for change in their communities," added Ms. Ramdas. "For example, a new Global Fund grantee, the Multidisciplinary African Women's Health Network in Accra, Ghana, brings together representatives from 32 African countries to analyze, research and improve the status of women's health on the continent, thereby maximizing the use of scarce research funding."

The Global Fund for Women makes small grants, ranging from $500 to $15,000, to international women's rights organizations. In addition to supporting groups that seek to improve women's health, grantees address other issues critical to women, such as poverty and economic opportunities, political participation and leadership, violence against women, and access to communications technology.

The Global Fund for Women gives more than $3.1 million in grants annually, and has awarded more than 2,100 grants to groups in more than 150 countries and territories since its inception.