Giving Women

Panel Conversation: Funding Women-Led, Women-Focused Organisations
2023-10-24 00:00 UTC
Registration for this Online Panel at the Bottom of the Page 👇
The challenge of finding unrestricted funding is ubiquitous in every discussion with beneficiary organisations large and small. Is unrestricted funding the way to go? Why are funders finding this so difficult to do?
Join us for a conversation with a panel made up of directors of two grant-giving foundations, the director of a Giving Women project and Dr Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah, the CEO of OXFAM to discuss the merits and impact of their Women’s Rights Fund (WRF) which supports women’s rights organisations (WROs) with flexible, multi-year funding to invest in their own priorities.
Katharina Samara-Wickrama, director of Issues Affecting Women Programme (IAWP) at Oak Foundation will be moderating the conversation
Our panelists will be:
Muriel Guigue, Head of Philanthropy, Cartier Philanthropy
Olivia Leland, Founder & CEO of Co-Impact
Amisa Rashid, Founder and Executive Director Nivishe Foundation
Dr Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah,CEO, OXFAM
Bios to follow
Katharina Samara-Wickrama – Moderator
A lawyer by training, Katharina began her humanitarian career in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where she worked primarily on promoting gender equality and the rights of refugee women. Thereafter she set up the first joint NGO programme to prevent and address sexual exploitation and abuse of refugee women and girls, training staff on the issue and conducting investigations into allegations of abuse and exploitation. More recently she led the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership. Katharina is currently the Director of the Issues Affecting Women programme of Oak Foundation supporting initiatives that address violence against women, intra-familial violence and trafficking and exploitation of women. Katharina’s passion is to open spaces for the voices that most often go unheard. Otherwise you can find her dipping in the chilly waters of Lake Geneva or making music with a community of Afro-Brazilian Samba Reggae drummers. Her favourite vegetable is chocolate.
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Muriel Guigue
Before joining the Cartier Philanthropy in 2016, Muriel worked for the last 15 years within UN agencies (UNCTAD, UNOG, ITC) and Foundations (International Cocoa Initiative, Trafigura Foundation and Puma Energy Foundation), and has extensive experience of programme management, with a specific focus on monitoring and evaluation of projects in developing countries. Muriel holds a master’s degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Grenoble and a diploma in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics.
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Olivia Leland
Olivia is the Founder and CEO of Co-Impact, a global philanthropic collaborative for equitable systems change at scale, focused on advancing gender equality and elevating women and girls’ power, agency and leadership at all levels. Olivia has more than two decades of international experience in philanthropy, government, and the non-profit sector. Prior to Co-Impact, Olivia was the founding director of the Giving Pledge – an effort launched by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett to help address society’s most pressing problems by encouraging increased philanthropy. Previously, Olivia worked in microfinance and financial inclusion, and in the areas of strategy development, multi-sector collaboration, and advancing gender equality.
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Amisa Rashid
Amisa Rashid is a counselling psychologist and a mediator specializing in peace building and Trauma Healingcentring her work on Trauma informed resilience for community building. Aiming at reducing conflict and violence in her community, Amisa is the Founder and Executive Director of Nivishe Foundation whose main objective is building community resilient using Trauma informed programs for peaceful social cohesion to her community by creating safe spaces and offering psychosocial support to victims of violence. Being an individual who values inclusivity she has pioneered Nivishe in offering Mental Health services through sign languages which since its commencement has managed to serve 200 individuals with hearing Aid challenges. To have a holistic approach in her field she is also a 2020 IPHRD (International Peace and Human Rights Development) Africa Fellow as a young woman Mediator Ambassador. She is the also the only Kenyan chosen among 10 participants globally to participate in the 2021 Orygen Global fellowship for young Mental Health Advocates.
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Dr Danny Sriskandarajah
Danny has been Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam Great Britain since January 2019. Prior to that he spent six years as Secretary General of CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. He has previously been Director General of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Interim Director of the Commonwealth Foundation and held various posts at the Institute for Public Policy Research. From 2018 to 2019 he was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and from 2015 to 2016 a member of the High Level Panel on Humanitarian Finance. He has been a Trustee of the Baring Foundation, Comic Relief, and International Alert, and a member of the Lead Group of Scaling Up Nutrition.
