Crisis Response: The Timely Mandate of the Global Resilience Fund

Girls and young feminists are at the forefront of today’s crises – coordinating evacuations, delivering essential goods and supplies, providing mental health support, building connectivity networks and so much more.

Yet, this activism remains chronically underfunded. As Laura Vergara and Ruby Johnson shared with me in our recent conversation, this isn’t just a coincidence – it’s a matter of feminist activists being silenced and pushed away, for calling out the injustices in systems responsible for creating these crises in the first place.

Vergara and Johnson steward the Global Resilience Fund, a collaborative feminist fund launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. The fund, sparked and sustained by Purposeful, works to resource girls and young feminists who are impacted by and responding to crises, across five continents and more than three dozen countries.

The fund has been a critical source of support for young activists who have been excluded from funding from international aid and philanthropy – as well as a voice of reason and protest, publishing reports on the role of feminist activists in places like Palestine, Ukraine and Sudan.

We spoke with Laura Vergara, Advocacy and Organizing Lead, and Ruby Johnson, Fund Director, about the scope of young feminists’ crisis response work, why it matters, and how Global Resilience Fund works. The edited conversation is below.

Before we get into your work… the US elections last week signaled a far-right swing, and globally, despite some recent wins for human rights proponents, this year’s elections have shown a trend toward authoritarian or anti-rights leaders. What is your advice for funders looking to make sense of it all?

We have to remember that regardless of the government in power, movements find a way to show up and care for their communities.

Girls and young feminists are at – and will remain at – the forefront of movement work and crisis response. In the past four years alone, they have responded to COVID-19 and countless other crises through mutual aid networks, webs of informal care, and autonomous digital infrastructure. They have led revolutions, stood up against authoritarian regimes, reclaimed their bodies and territories, and rebuilt societies in the face of crisis.

In all these cases, they operated outside of, and in spite of, the failure of formal humanitarian and government systems to ensure their communities’ survival. So our job as funders is to figure out how to show up, follow their leadership and keep funding flowing.

That will be especially important as we see funding cuts from the Netherlands, Sweden, and likely the US, as well as across private philanthropy, with potentially devastating impacts for feminist movements. What can funders do?

At this critical moment, funders must go beyond the rhetoric of “general support,” “power-shifting,” or “multi-year support.” They need to embrace true material solidarity and urgently accelerate the flow of resources – release the funds now, without restrictions or conditions.

Why are massive endowments still being held back? Why does only 5% of total assets go to grantmaking, while 95% remains locked in investments that perpetuate harmful systems of exploitation and oppression?

We must redirect 70% or more of these funds now—why not? Or, better yet, transfer endowment ownership directly to communities. As Shanelle Matthews brilliantly shares: “this is a pivotal time to consider a new economic order that prioritizes economic equality, social programs, and taxing the damn rich.”

Finally, make investments transparent and divest from harm. With crises set to escalate, we must push for real, transformative change, and ensure that those who are most marginalized, most oppressed, and most directly impacted by these systems are at the center of our efforts and receiving the support and backing needed.

Back to your work. Global Resilience Fund launched during a recent global crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. How did that unfold?

The Global Resilience Fund emerged organically in dialogue between friends and peer funders at the very beginning, in early 2020. Those of us who work with girls and young feminists knew that in many ways they would be worst impacted, would undoubtedly show up for their communities in response, and yet would be vastly unrecognized and under-resourced, as they have been for decades.

This moment demanded action and accountability, requiring us to respond with the same creativity and urgency as the girls and young feminists themselves. Together Purposeful and a group of more than 20 funders came together to form the Global Resilience Fund, along with a community deeply committed to supporting girls and young feminists. Within a few short months we had moved grants to more than 252 groups in over 100 countries. 

The launch of the Fund was possible because of the existing collaboration that we'd all done in different ways over the years. Many funders quite quickly just came to the table with almost no questions – it was based on existing trust, relationships and friendships that enabled us to move. I think we were all somewhat amazed at how quickly we were able to move together. 

I think it's important to recognize that this work doesn’t occur solely in the midst of a crisis; it takes place every day – before, during, and after crises unfold.

This context creates a crucial distinction in how we frame the conversation. First, it highlights the ongoing nature of the work led by girls and young feminists and their allies, which often go unrecognized until a crisis erupts. Their courage, creativity, and resilience are not reactive; they are proactive, laying the groundwork for change long before and after a crisis hits.

Second, understanding this context underscores the importance of sustained support and resources for their critical work. This means that the responsibility—or lack thereof—does not lie with them, but rather with the failure of funders to prioritize and hold themselves accountable for supporting these essential efforts.

What’s unique about the work that young feminists are doing in response to a crisis?

We're seeing girls and young feminists leading a range of efforts in political, climate and humanitarian crises, providing essential humanitarian aid, food, water, sanitation – but also creating and fostering those psychosocial support systems, and networks of care.

We see them sharing tools for documentation or citizen journalism, participatory action research, creative art-based methods, and other accountability work with communities. On the frontline of large scale protests in Kenya, to student movements in Bangladesh, to complex humanitarian emergencies.

For example, in Sudan, one group was able to establish a sexual emergency room and provide psychological support sessions, and combine knowledge sharing with the distribution of essential supplies. They have worked closely with feminist groups to address security and safety concerns.

Another group in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo established a center for girls and young women in a refugee camp to access Android phones so that they can document their experiences of violence and better understand technology and digital security. Even in such a harsh context, they’re looking to digital tools as a way to demand accountability.

This speaks to why it’s so important not to see girls as beneficiaries of aid in those contexts, but as frontline responders, as actors in a crisis who have something to say and do – who continually show up for their communities long after humanitarian actors leave.

One frequently overlooked effort is fighting back against misinformation, which tends to proliferate during crises.

Access to clear and accurate information is essential. Young feminists are engaging in innovative work to connect and share vital information through tools that are relevant, secure, and accessible to their communities. Their work centers on accountability and responsiveness to the well-being of their communities, a principle that is clearly reflected in their work.

As one example – during the height of the pandemic, many Indigenous communities had minimal to no information on how to stay safe. Young feminists recognized that they could not rely on governments for support; instead, they utilized their established autonomous tools and networks to respond to the crisis.

Some created radio programs that provided updates on the pandemic in Indigenous languages, helping to combat misinformation. Others developed accessible mental health support programs through phone lines and community networks. 

And this work is happening all the time. Girls and young feminists are building the capacity of their communities to expose the ways in which propaganda is spread through social media, calling out misinformation and fostering critical media literacy.

They are not only informing their peers but also creating safe spaces for dialogue, where individuals can discuss their experiences and share strategies. 

Why is the Fund’s collaborative model important?

We collaborate closely with other funders, whether that's feminist funders, private funders or United Nations agencies.

In many crises, the fund has acted as a field level mechanism to move money quickly in collaboration with partners who can't fund informal unregistered groups. Sometimes we move the money on behalf of others, or vice versa or have used our decision-making model to select groups and  the money is distributed locally, for instance by a local women's fund.

The process is always adapted and driven by the local communities we're working with. That includes offering our applications in different languages, from Spanish, Arabic, French, Ukrainian, Bengali, Burmese and beyond.

We work with advisors who know their local contexts, and collaborate with other advisors from different parts of their country and region. We create a list of priorities, and then work through that, often very quickly over Signal when there's a need to move fast, and then other times over calls. We are able to have nuanced conversations about the politics of where a particular bucket of money should go.

A lot of our work has been in setting up systems to enable collaboration between funders, sometimes as simple as referrals – we know a specific group has responded to XYZ, so how do we connect them to this other group?  As funders, in times of constant crisis, how can we better organize ourselves to reduce burden for our partners and connect each other to information and shared resources? How can we rethink who's actually being centered in crisis efforts, and our own accountability?

As funders, in times of constant crisis, how can we better organize ourselves to reduce burden for our partners and connect each other to information?

How do you approach crises in your work? We often hear crises described as “natural” – like hurricanes – or “manmade” – like war. How does your work relate to this framing?

Crises are not by accident, and they're not natural. In fact, systemic injustice is one of the most unnatural things in the world.

What has happened is that crises have been normalized – imposed on people and land to make oppression, abuse, and the killing of communities appear acceptable, as if this is what’s expected.

This makes it incredibly important to have an analysis of crises that understands this clear injustice and how it plays in every single space – from narratives to policies, practices and all around. Crises are the product of systems designed in a specific way, and we need to support the response to those crises, as well as dismantle and transform those very same systems.

That involves centering those who have been pushed out and placed at the margins. This shifts the conversation from “relief” to one of justice and reparations—not tokenistic gestures or savior complexes, but a genuine commitment to comprehensively address and repair harm. It’s about reclaiming power, resources, and dignity for those most deeply affected by these injustices.

Girls and young feminists impacted by crises are leading critical response work and are grounded in this framing; they are not seeking handouts but advocating for justice and the well-being of their communities. Their analysis, demands, and political clarity serve as a powerful guiding force for us all.

Ruby Johnson is a feminist organizer, practitioner, and strategist working to redistribute resources and power to intersectional social justice movements. Ruby is Co-Founder of Closer Than You Think, an ideas studio and consultancy collective working at the intersection of activism, philanthropy, and art  and leads the Global Resilience Fund at Purposeful.

Laura Vergara is a queer feminist Colombian organizer, strategist, and storyteller. Her organizing and advocacy efforts began within and as a part of the immigrant and refugee rights movements and have since expanded across feminist and social justice movements.