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The Global Fund for Women has provided grants and worked in
partnership with women struggling to rebuild their lives and
communities after a number of natural disasters, including the
2004 tsunamis, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and Hurricanes Stan
and Mitch (which struck Central America in 1998). Because we
are painfully aware that humanity will continue to face
natural disasters—and politically motivated humanitarian
crises as well—we are compelled to share what we have learned
from direct grantmaking to women's rights groups during and
after emergency situations in a special report.
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Women and Natural
Disasters
The Global Fund's Response
The Global Fund for Women aims to provide longterm support to
local groups in regions affected by natural disasters with grants
that help communities rebuild, prevent sexual violence, and ensure
that women and children are accorded their full human rights in all
stages of development. While the Global Fund does not conduct direct
relief efforts, we inform grantees in disaster regions that they may
use any moneys from open grants to address such crises.
The Global Fund's recent work in disaster regions has been made
possible by the generous support of numerous individuals,
foundations and organizations including: The San Francisco
Foundation, Working Assets, the Flora Family Foundation, the Channel
Foundation, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the S.H. Cowell
Foundation, and the Levi Strauss Foundation.
As winter approaches, more than three million people remain
homeless in the mountains of Pakistan and India. The Global Fund has
awarded a $30,350 emergency grant to the Rural Women Welfare
Organization (RWWO), a women's group organizing to end
violence against women in Pakistan. RWWO is rebuilding women's
health clinics and girls' schools in the towns razed by the
earthquake.
 Groups throughout Central America
are mobilizing to provide support to low-income and indigenous
communities, which have lost their homes and livelihoods to
Hurricane Stan. The Global Fund has awarded $15,000 to the
New Horizons Home Association in Guatemala to
provide food, shelter and health services to over 125 families. The
Association is also working with local women to seed economic
empowerment projects to provide for communities over the long
term.
Response to
Hurricane Katrina
While the Global Fund normally does not fund in the United
States, we could not ignore the destruction and subsequent human
rights abuses wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the American South.
Following the hurricane, the Global Fund awarded $10,000 to the
Katrina Women's Response Fund of the Ms. Foundation for Women. This fund is providing
immediate support to women of color and low-income women in the Gulf
Coast region, and ensuring that their leadership and priorities are
central in both short and long-term recovery and rebuilding
efforts.
Solidarity
Statement: Hurricane Katrina
 Immediately after the earthquake
and tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean in December 2004, the
Global Fund for Women reached out to all of our grantees in the
affected regions from Asia to Africa. Since January 2005, the Global
Fund has awarded $104,000 in tsunami relief to 15 women's
organizations in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
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