Catalyst Grants
A Mine Labor Protection Campaign Trust (MLPC)event attendee.
Our Catalyst Grants Program is the way IDEX finds and selects new organizations to receive small grants. Because partnership entails a significant commitment over 3 to 6 years, we choose partners carefully, with confidence that the partner organization operates in an accountable, democratic, and transparent way in working towards lasting social change for marginalized communities. Learn more about our selection criteria.
Catalyst Grantees will receive approximately $5,000 for a project lasting 6 to 12 months. The small grant affords IDEX a low-risk opportunity to work with an organization works before selecting them for a longer-term relationship.
Current Catalyst Grantees
After careful review, IDEX has recently selected three grassroots organizations in South Africa and seven in India to each receive a one-year $5,000 Catalyst Grant. We hope to able to choose new partners for a longer-term commitment from this pool by Spring 2012.
All of the selected groups work in underserved communities and develop local initiatives to end poverty that also empower women, build local economies and care for the environment. We are excited to announce the following grantees:
South Africa
Rural Education, Awareness & Community Health
REACH raises awareness on the issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence, especially in rural farming communities. REACH provides support services to address and assist those whose lives are affected by these social problems.
Surplus People Project
SPP SPP advocates for pro poor agrarian reform and food sovereignty - the right of people to produce their own food, determine agricultural policies and access healthy food. SPP believes that the rural economy can be transformed through land, water and agricultural reform.
SPP supports and builds grassroots organizations and movements of small-scale farmers, farm dwellers and women in the Western and Northern Cape, through a process of political education, social mobilization, institutional and agricultural development and research. SPP's wide range of experiences, skills and competencies enable them to combine professional support for effective program implementation with activism required for agrarian transformation and broader social change.
Women's Net
Women'sNet is a South African based non-governmental organization that works to advance gender equality. Their work focuses on the intersection between gender and information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Women'sNet recognizes that ICTs still divided by gender and aim to address imbalances in women and men's access to and meaningful use of ICT's. This recognition is echoed in global and regional policy, conventions and agreements (the Millennium Development Goals, and the World Summit on the Information Society Agreements to name a few).
Women'sNet aims to bridge the digital divide through activities targeting South African women and girls and the organizations that represent them. They focus on equal participation, equal access to opportunities and equal use and benefit in the Information Society.
India
Action Northeast Trust Fund (ANT)
Based in the Lower Assam area of India, Action Northeast Trust works with over 135 village communities on issues including: women's empowerment, health, savings and loan schemes, and alternative income opportunities through weaving, and agriculture. Its community driven model of development is cost effective and sustainable.
ANT supports and builds professional associations and links disadvantaged women in the area, helping these weavers sell their goods across India and into the US. The Trust has been training women to manage their own business, resulting in a significant drop in the incidence of domestic violence and alcoholism. In addition to village-level work with women weavers, ANT is organizing these artisans into a craft trust that educates people about the issues and conditions in Northeast India.
Manipur Women Gun Survivors' Network (MWGSN)
Faced with an ever-present ethnic-based armed conflict in the Northeast of India, which has killed an estimated 20,000 men, women and children since the late 1940's, and coupled with a complete disregard for its victims, the Manipur Women Gun Survivors' Network, was established in 2004.
MWGSN is now a leading voice in Manipur, helping women survivors of gun victims find ways to heal their scars, share their pain and subsequently make a living. They support women to launch small economic activities and business ventures by offering training in financial literacy, and assisting them in getting bank accounts and small no-interest loans. With this support, the women have businesses in silk reeling, weaving, production of mats from water reed, and agricultural activities like mushroom farming, fisheries and piggeries.
The organization places itself at the focal point of disarmament debates, creating mass awareness programs about the devastating effects on families, together with sharing and disseminating information with other think tanks and NGO networks in the area. MWGSN is also part of a larger association, Control Arms Foundation of India (CAFI) with a main focus of finding sustainable solutions towards ending ongoing armed violence within Northeast India, as they affect civil society particularly women, children and the elderly.
Click here to read more on MWGSN.
Impulse NGO Network
Impulse NGO Network, is a consortium of different stake-holders, including law enforcement, government, media and other social institutions, which combat human trafficking in the Meghalaya state of Northeast India.
Using an innovative, and highly effective holistic approach called the Meghalaya model, Impulse has intervened in over 137 cases of human trafficking with the organization witnessing an overall 80% increase in human trafficking related reports between 2001-2005 in the area. Other achievements include training more than 200 police officers on how to respond to trafficking, and creating a simplified police handbook on trafficking that is used by the state's police training academies.
The victims of human trafficking are mostly children, especially young girls, deceived into fake marriages, child and sex labor and often sold into inescapable exploitation. The challenges remain high with inadequate numbers of shelters to serve trafficking survivors. Knowing that many trafficked women and children are in the sex industry, and the risks they face with HIV/AIDS, Impulse Network has launched different educational and vocational programs to help in the rehabilitation, counseling and employment of these Microloans and business training is also offered to other community members.
Chintan
Chintan is an Indian environmental organization that partners with diverse actors for environmental justice. This includes sustainable production and consumption, and the disposal of environmental goods and services. With the informal recycling sector becoming the primary form of recycling in India, focuses on supporting these workers that consist of waste pickers, buyers and dealers, with sustainable livelihoods.
Chintan works to mobilize wider public support for environmental sustainability and green jobs for the urban poor through research, campaigns and capacity building. To this end, Chintan is greatly involved in building the capacity for green jobs in the informal sector, inclusion of the urban poor in policy making, and research and advocacy on issues of environmental justice and environmental governance. A central focus is in helping children working in recycling to phase out and go to school, as well as education and awareness-raising with diverse disadvantaged groups.
Mine Labor Protection Campaign Trust (MLPC)
Based in Rajasthan district, India, MLPC helps disadvantaged mine and quarry workers to protect their rights and the environment, by regulating mining operations, empowering workers, developing cooperatives, and sustaining the environment. With 2.5 million mine workers employed by more than 30,000 mines in the state of Rajasthan, many are among the most marginalized groups in India and earn less than minimum wage.
These workers, mostly from the historical "untouchable class," are systematically deprived of their wages and state sponsored welfare programs. The most deprived become bonded, migrant and casual laborers, with debt often passed from one generation to the next creating an endless cycle of poverty. MLPC works to organize these communities to eradicate child labor, address issues of occupational health and safety, and secure workers compensation while advocating for sustainable ethical mining in the area.
Navdanya Trust
Founded by Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya is the pioneer in India in the conservation of biodiversity and promotion of ecological agriculture. It is a women-centered network for the protection of biological and cultural diversity, which includes seed keepers and organic producers spread across 16 states in India. Through its expanding work, Navdanya has helped set up 54 community seed banks across the country and trained more than 500,000 farmers in seed and food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture.
Navdanya has also provided support for the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country and is actively involved in rejuvinating indigenous knowledge and culture. Furthermore, Navdanya raises awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering and actively defends food rights and people's knowledge from biopiracy in the face of globalization and climate change. Navdanya means "nine crops" which represents India's collective source and heritage of food security.
Rajsamand Mahila Manch (RMM)
Rajsamand Mahila Manch, or Rajsamand Women’s Forum, is a federation of village level tribal women’s groups that is affiliated with the larger development agency based in Rajasthan, Astha. RMM organizes poor and marginalized women and addresses the issues of abuse and deprivation. Working to empower women, RMM focuses on awareness-raising about such topics as water, health and information on required changes in caste and community customs. With almost 7,000 members, RMM works in 216 villages in 4 blocks of the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan in India.
RMM runs a Family Counseling Center, since 2004, which handle different cases of dowry-related and sexual harassment, domestic violence, and holds training sessions with doctors, nurses and police officers. RMM also supports members to obtain relief from debt, and works on food security and nutrition issues, access to government-run rural employment programs, as well as campaigning against child marriage.
Blog
Girls Amplify Their Voices Through Technology
Friday, January 13, 2012
Katherine Zavala – IDEX’s Program Manager, Grassroots Alliances – reports back on a recent trip to South Africa where she visited IDEX Catalyst Grantee Women’s Net.