Welcome to our 2023 Grantees!
The Mize Family Foundation is pleased to announce our 2023 grants awarded to the following new and returning organizations:
A WARM WELCOME TO OUR NEW GRANTEES OF 2023!
AGROECOLOGY FUND AFRICA
Agroecology Fund Africa is a force of many and diverse voices, mobilizing resources to build power that transforms food systems and fosters the well-being of people and the planet. Their goal is that by the year 2050, robust rural and urban communities with thriving economies will offer dignity and livelihoods for all food producers, as well as the ability to adapt to and mitigate environmental change.
BOMA
BOMA’s mission is to deliver economic inclusion to the most marginalized and vulnerable individuals, foster empowerment, hope, and resilience to multiple crises, and promote prosperity has blossomed on a global scale.
Center for Diversity and the Environment
Center for Diversity and the Environment believes the environmental movement must evolve as a field to better care for the planet, people and all beings. It will require a system-wide shift in how we approach environmentalism, our relationships with each other, and our place within the natural world. Our work focuses on growing a strong and diverse network of leaders to envision, instigate and guide this transformation.
Akashinga
Akashinga — formerly the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF) — is an innovative nature conservation organization that creates resilient ecosystems where nature, wildlife, and communities will thrive together for years to come.
Northern Girl's Initiative
Northern Girls Initiative (NGI) believes every girl in Northern Ghana deserves the chance to dare to dream. A chance to envision a future full of promise – whether that means becoming a nurse, teacher, innovator, or leader. They empower these girls to turn their dreams into realities with access to mentors, education programs, and career development opportunities. They link girls to people and resources that build their confidence and expand their vision of what's possible.
Samburu Women Trust
Samburu Women Trust builds deep connections with indigenous peoples’ aspirations and culture. For years, they have collaborated with Indigenous communities to support Indigenous People-led community organisations. They frequently address the interconnected issues of supporting vibrant communities, strong cultures, and viable economies. They do everything in our power to create a world where indigenous women and girls human rights are respected and protected.
Women Fund Tanzania Trust
Women Fund Tanzania (WFT) Trust wants every woman, girl and child to be empowered and free from, violence and having voice and agency in leadership and political participation. The believe it is important for WFT Trust to promote a grant making model that offers an inclusive package of support to give voice and visibility to marginalized women on controversial issues. They do this through a two-way approach focusing on local level grant making and on strategic national coalition building.
WELCOME BACK TO OUR 2023 RETURNING GRANTEES!
THE CHISHOLM LEGACY PROJECT
The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in a Just Transition Framework. The project serves as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with resources to traverse the path from vision to strategy to action plan to implementation to transformation. In support of frontline leadership, the project seeks to link movements and mainstream entities with the tools necessary to advance systems change centered in equity and justice. With Black women on the frontlines of advancing systems change, this project ensures that these leaders have the support they need as they transform society from extractivism to a living economy that cares for sacred relationships between people and with Mother Earth, through regenerative, cooperative, democratic systems.
ILLUMINATIVE
IllumiNative was founded by Crystal Echo Hawk, President of Echo Hawk Consulting, and a group of respected Native artists, thought leaders and allies, to capitalize on the findings of Reclaiming Native Truth (RNT) – the largest public opinion research and strategy setting initiative ever conducted for, and about, Native Americans. The data presented in RNT concluded that pop culture, media and K-12 education drive and perpetuate the negative stereotypes and myths and has led to the erasure of Native peoples. By honing IllumiNative’s focus on these drivers, this initiative will provide opportunities to not only substantially increase accurate and positive representations of Native peoples, but also positively impact policy and end the continued discrimination and disparities faced by Native communities.
HONOR THE EARTH
Honor the Earth is a Native-led organization, established by Winona LaDuke and Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, in 1993 to address the two primary needs of the Native environmental movement: the need to break the geographic and political isolation of Native communities and the need to increase financial resources for organizing and change.
Honor the Earth’s mission is to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. Honor the Earth develops these resources by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth and be a voice for those not heard.
URGENT ACTION FUND – AFRICA
Urgent Action Fund-Africa is a consciously feminist and women’s human rights Pan-African Fund established in 2001 in Nairobi, Kenya. As the first rapid response fund on the continent, UAF-Africa adds value to the work of activists and civil society organisations focusing on women’s active socio-political participation and visibility by leveraging resources and opportunities for critical engagements that advance women’s rights. Committed to working across Africa, UAF-Africa builds broader alliances with partners at national, regional and international levels.
WOMIN
WoMin, launched in October 2013, is an African gender and extractives alliance, which works alongside national and regional movements and popular organisations of women, mining-impacted communities and peasants, and in partnership with other sympathetic organizations.
XOESE
The vision of “XOESE, the Francophone Women’s Fund” is a world where women and girls fully enjoy all their fundamental human rights in a safe and sustainable economic and social environment and have equal opportunities to access resources and decision-making positions as men and boys.
Her mission is to mobilize financial, material and human resources and reinvest them to support the implementation of women’s and young women’s activists’ and organizations’ initiatives promoting women’s, young women’s and girls’ rights, their economic empowerment and gender equality in Global South French-speaking countries.
Her aim is to financially and technically support the implementation of women’s and young women’s organizations’ initiatives in Global South French-speaking countries.
ZIMBABWE ORGANIC SMALLHOLDER FARMERS’ FORUM (ZIMSOFF)
ZIMSOFF envisions improved livelihoods of organized and empowered smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, practicing sustainable and viable ecological agriculture.
ZIMSOFF’s mission is to influence policies and to raise public awareness with regards to agroecology and the rights of smallholder farmers in Zimbabawe. ZIMSOFF’s membership, now at 19,000, is made up of smallholder farmers from four clusters in Zimbabwe; the central cluster, Masvingo and Midlands province; the eastern cluster, Manicaland province; the northern cluster, Mashonaland province; and the western cluster, Matabeleland province.
ZIMSOFF is made up of smallholder farmers working with a variety of stakeholders to ensure that issues of food sovereignty, land justice, and environmental justice are represented in local, national, regional and international spaces. ZIMSOFF’s work focuses on agroecology, biodiversity, agrarian reform, seed sovereignty, and gender parity.