As a women’s fund, South Asia Women Foundation India (SAWF IN) supports grassroots initiatives and women’s and trans* person led organisations with financial and non-financial resources. We believe in their leadership and skills to find the most appropriate and long-term solutions to address the issues facing them. We also understand that women’s groups engaged in gender-transformative work continue to operate with limited resources and systems of support; as many are under-resourced and rarely equipped to access donors, they need more long-term support. SAWF IN engages and promotes rights-based work of marginalised women-led groups and organisations that need the additional resources to build and strengthen their institutions.

Our role is to ensure that resources are made available and are reaching the most dispossessed women’s collectives, for the priorities they identify, and the claims they make. We support organisations led by women, to scale their strategies for political, social, and economic empowerment of women and trans* persons. While we support the agenda prioritised by grassroots groups of marginalised women and trans* persons, our current grants on women and trans* communities’ rights span across these priority areas:

1.  Economic participation and economic justice for women and trans* persons
2.  Elimination of gender-based violence

Write to sawfindia@gmail.com if you are interested in supporting the work of women's groups.

Our partners

Diya Welfare Society, Chitrakoot- SAWF IN is committed to supporting women’s and trans* rights organisations and activists in their work to advance their rights and leadership in India. We support community organisations, collectives and individual experts working collaboratively with community actors to bring a holistic and sustainable change using feminist principles. Read More 

Pragati Path Foundation (PPF) is a woman-led non-profit organization registered in 2011 it is based on a feminist human rights approach. The organization primarily operates in the Varanasi District in the state of Uttar Pradesh, with a feminist approach to women's with economic empowerment. Pragati Path Foundation has been working for over last 13 years with women on different issues like gender & sexuality, reproductive health, violence against women,social justice and enhancing their economic participation. SAWF IN is partnering with Pragati Path Foundation to build the economic resilience of women artisans residing in Badagaon, Harahua and urban clusters in Varanasi. Under this
programme, PPF will engage with 180 women artisans who are involved in wood-carving and lacquerware of wooden toys.

Bhojpur Mahila Kala Kendra (BMKK) is a woman-led non-profit organization working in the Bhojpur district of the state of Bihar for the last two decades to organize, educate, and empower the rural poor to promote development as a liberating force aimed at justice, economic growth, and self-reliance. BMKK aims to develop the skills of adolescent girls as well as women to promote their economic participation. BMKK’s core programs have been in the areas of skill development, elimination of child labour, gender equality, and micro-enterprise development. SAWF IN and BMKK are partnering together to strengthen the skills of 180 women artisans in Arrah and Sandesh blocks of Bhojpur by training them on creating sikki (a type of grass native to the state of Bihar) products and products made using sujani embroidery (a type of embroidery practiced in Bihar) and crochet jewellery. The aim is to promote women artisan’s access to economic resources, and government schemes and build leadership within them thereby enhancing their ability to become entrepreneurs.