South Asia Women Foundation India, SAWF IN, is the national women's fund in India. It supports women and trans* led organisations, collectives and individuals in their efforts towards movement building for gender justice in India. SAWF IN mobilises financial and non-financial resources for strengthening grassroots initiatives led by women and trans* people.

SAWF IN was founded by Priya Paul and Suneeta Dhar in 2015, following deliberations on the need for securing local and indigenous resources to support women and trans* rights and justice work in India. SAWF IN seeks to influence mainstream philanthropy and nurture a community of donors, so that women and trans led initiatives are able to access flexible and sustained resources.

SAWF IN works in collaboration with many women’s rights organisations, women’s funds 

Why do we need a Women’s Fund?

Women’s Fund are an important institutional mechanism to reach out to the most excluded groups and initiatives advancing women and trans* rights and leaderships and ensuring they receive engaged support. SAWF IN works towards ensuring resources are available and are reaching the most dispossessed women’s collectives, for the priorities they identify, and the claims they make. SAWF IN understands that many women’s groups engaged in gender transformative work continue to operate without resources or work with limited systems support; many are under resourced and rarely equipped to access international donors, or even more organised funders. Thus, SAWF IN comes with a special mandate to engage and promote rights based work of these marginalised groups and organisations who need the additional resource to build and strengthen their institution.

Renu Mishra, Association for Advocacy Legal Institute (AALI). She has been an integral part of the development sector for the last twenty years, dedicated to women’s rights and empowerment and is also a practising lawyer. In this video Renu speaks about how the issues of funds and resources are threatening the survival of grassroots organisations and how the existence of a ‘Fund’ can help them go on.