Hear from Salama Kikudo, Executive Director of Hope 4 Young Girls Tanzania and Malala Fund’s Dr. Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, the global lead for grantmaking strategy, about why funders should move beyond rhetoric to truly put power in the hands of young women and girls.
As International Day of the Girl approaches, we must confront an undeniable reality: the vast majority of funding for gender equality never reaches the girls and young women leading change on the ground. Malala Fund has learned through more than a decade of grantmaking that resourcing young women-led organisations is essential to strengthening advocacy, building movements, and driving lasting change. We also recognise that girl-led groups remain significantly underfunded, and we are committed to expanding our support in that direction.
Yet, philanthropy has not lived up to its rhetoric. Too often, women- and girl-led organisations remain underfunded and overlooked. At its core, this is a trust and power issue.
Do we trust girls when they tell us what they need to learn and lead?
Do we trust young women-led organisations to design advocacy strategies that achieve change?
Do we trust them with the power and autonomy to use our funding the way they see fit?
Why this matters now
We are in a moment where cuts to Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) and shrinking public budgets disproportionately impact those who are already left behind, including girls. Girls are facing rising school dropouts, gender-based violence and climate crises, and their needs are greater than ever.
This is the moment for funders to lean in, radically re-think our comfort with risk, and fund young women-led and, increasingly, girl-led organisations bravely and boldly.
At Malala Fund, we have elevated centring girls and collective action as cross-cutting priorities to face these challenges head-on. We believe that girls are more than our beneficiaries; they are our true partners leading the charge and making the change. Young women were invited to help shape our 2025–2030 strategic plan, and their expertise and insights continue to guide us.
Globally, women’s rights organisations received less than 1 percent (USD 142 million) of humanitarian aid funding between 2021 and 2022. At Malala Fund, we have set a benchmark of directing at least 20% of our Education Champion Network grantmaking budget to young women-led organisations. We recognise that we still have a lot more to do to ensure girl-led organisations are equally resourced, and we are committed to moving in that direction.
When girls are funded, change happens: Salama’s story
Salama Kikudo is the founder and executive director of Hope 4 Young Girls Tanzania, a Malala Fund grantee organisation, advocating for girls’ right to education and dismantling the barriers that hold them back. Her own journey is deeply connected to this mission.
Growing up in Tanzania, she fought for her education and refused early marriage as her fate.
Before receiving Malala Fund’s support, Salama often found her work overlooked by larger donors who preferred established INGOs. The grant was more than financial support—it was recognition that her vision and leadership mattered.
In 2021, her organisation joined a caravan of 10 young women-led groups across three regions to prevent child marriage. “Without hesitation, we agreed to act,” she recalls. “We coordinated, mobilised, and intervened together.”
That experience showed the power of trust: “We don’t lack vision or legitimacy,” Salama explains. “What we lack is flexible, sustained funding—support too often reserved for larger, Global North institutions. We are bold, collaborative and deeply rooted in [our] communities’ realities. And when we are trusted, we not only deliver change—we bring other girls’ voices with us. At Hope 4 Young Girls Tanzania, I create spaces for girls to share their experiences, shape our advocacy, and lead campaigns in their own right. When we invest in girls and women, we invest in action, in resilience, in courage and in futures transformed.”
What we are learning at Malala Fund
Our partners, many of whom are brilliant young women grassroots leaders like Salama, who have local knowledge and deep cultural expertise, are usually locked out of decision-making spaces. They often lack access to networking platforms and funding opportunities available to more prominent INGOs and NGOs operating in their communities. Yet, they still do the work. Brilliantly and steadfastly, they do the work.
Examples abound—from young women in Tanzania using film to fight child marriage to girls in Brazil linking reproductive rights to education through peer workshops.
Exclusion from resources is not accidental - it is a direct outcome of systems that perpetuate inequality. Power imbalances are intrinsic to any funding relationship, and we must be constantly mindful of our power as funders in these partnerships. At Malala Fund, we understand that we need to approach our grantmaking with humility and a posture of active listening and learning.
We continue to learn — from the young women and girl-led organisations we support, and from feminist funders, participatory community foundations, and mutual aid groups that model trust-based, accountable grantmaking. We are adopting their best practices to refine our own strategy. We know that matching our practice to our principles is an ongoing journey, and we are committed to staying the course.
In this moment of global polycrisis, one of the most important lessons Malala Fund has learned from more than a decade of work is that no single organisation can address the compounding barriers to girls’ secondary education. We know that strengthening the capacity of young women and girls to engage in collective action within and across movements contributes to a more robust and resilient civil society. We also know that young women-led organisations may be nascent entities that might not have the requisite organisational capacity or infrastructure to leverage funding opportunities. In responding to this need, Malala Fund has made strengthening organisational capacity one of the cornerstones of our grantmaking strategy - to ensure sustainability and long-term resilience.
Our partnership goes beyond grants: we accompany partners as thought partners, champions, and connectors—leveraging Malala Fund’s visibility to help them access platforms and additional funding.
A shared responsibility
If we truly believe in the buzzwords of “shifting power” that proliferate in our philanthropic sector, we need to shift resources. Funding girl- and young women-led organisations is a shared responsibility that requires collective action from all funders.
At Malala Fund, we are making measurable progress with young women-led organisations, and our aspiration is to extend this support to more girl-led groups as well. This is both a challenge and a commitment: to move beyond rhetoric, to confront the structural barriers that keep girl-led organisations underfunded, and to ensure they have the resources to lead change on their own terms.
Prospera, an international network of feminist funders, reports that it has doubled or tripled its grantmaking budgets in recent years. Yet, this remains a drop in the bucket. Even when the funding finds its way to initiatives that advance women’s rights, rarely do those funds make it into the hands of young women and girls.
Most girls and young women shoulder caregiving, household responsibilities, and breadwinning—often while striving for education against impossible odds. They have proven their resilience and leadership time and again. They are worthy of our trust.
They are more than worthy of our funding.
