ONSIDE Fund: Funding New Solutions to Advance Gender Justice in Sports

For women and girls, sport is a powerful tool to challenge gender norms and stereotypes. It enables them to regain ownership of their bodies, to experience joy, freedom and pleasure, to rebuild their lives after trauma, to find a safe network and a sense of meaning and purpose and to express their talent and passion professionally. However, sports have traditionally privileged boys and men over girls and women, while intersectional discriminations based on gender, sex, race, class, sexuality, etc. continue to limit access to sport for many. While significant gains have been made in women’s sport in recent years, these are now under considerable threat, and much remains to be done before sport becomes truly inclusive and equitable.

In 2020, Covid-19 threatens to erase the momentum and unprecedented attention women’s sport has gained around the world. From the elite to the grassroots, the gaps between women and men, girls and boys are set to widen. In response, the ONSIDE Fund, administered by Women Win, has been created as a partnership between women’s funds and sport for development organisations to support feminist organising and hyper local solutions that place girls and women at the centre of change.

The ONSIDE Fund’s vision is a world where all girls and women* exercise their right to play. Through grants of up to $10.000 USD of unrestricted funding, grassroots, community-based organisations, collectives, and groups led by girls and women and governed by feminist principles will support others to exercise their right to play and thus advance gender justice in sport.

The ONSIDE Fund is grounded on the following principles:

• We support feminist organising;
• We believe that girls and women taking action in their communities are at the centre of change;
• We commit to participatory and equitable approaches to decision-making, re-granting and learning.

Besides financial support, the ONSIDE Fund, as a continual initiative, is committed to creating a long-term community-engagement platform. Through a digital learning hub, the ONSIDE Fund will create dialogue spaces for re-grantees to mobilise a global community and movement that shares learnings, challenges and successes.

To learn more about the fund and apply please click here. Spread the word amongst your networks and support us in reaching as many grassroots organisations and collectives as possible!

*The ONSIDE Fund actively looks to support all cis, trans, non-binary and all other underrepresented groups and communities such as black, indigenous, mestizas, people of colour, LGBTIQ+, refugees, and migrant girls and women with orwithout disabilities.