Story Type: Grantee Partners

LEZ Connect

LEZ Connect’s mission is to provide an environment for LBTQ women where they can feel safe and focus on their rights to put an end to violence against women.

LEZ Connect is a group that seeks to raise awareness on issues LBTQ women face and educate the general public on the rights of women. Their mission is to provide an environment for LBTQ women where they can feel safe and focus on their rights to put an end to violence against women. The main goal of the group is to build and solidify a stronger LBTQ community within the LGBTQI population in Saint  Lucia.

Caribbean Forum for Liberation & Acceptance of Genders & Sexualities

Caribbean Forum for Liberation & Acceptance of Genders & Sexualities (CariFLAGS) has provided leadership in articulating an indigenous LGBTQ voice and agenda for the Caribbean regionally and in support of local groups.

Caribbean Forum for Liberation & Acceptance of Genders & Sexualities (CariFLAGS) was formed in the late 90s as a loose coalition of actors and activists responding to developing issues facing the LGBTQ community. The group has provided leadership in articulating an indigenous LGBTQ voice and agenda for the Caribbean regionally and in support of local groups. In 2008, a core group renewed the CariFLAGS mission with a focus on human rights, health, culture, and spirituality. In 2012, CariFLAGS transitioned into a regional movement-building coalition: activists from 15 territories agreed to work together to develop a strong, representative, regional organization capable of advancing a Caribbean LGBTQ agenda.

Tamùkke Feminist Rising

Tamùkke Feminist Rising focuses on providing information on sexual health, reproductive, economic and social rights, amongst womxn, LGBTQI people, and sex workers.

Tamùkke Feminist Rising is an organization founded on intersectional feminist values. Their work primarily focuses on providing information on sexual health, reproductive, economic and social rights, amongst womxn, LGBTQI people, and sex workers. The mission of Tamùkke Feminist Rising is to create a vibrant space for the exchange of information, experiences, and ideas related to womxnhood and the intersections of politics, economics and the environment, with a particular focus on the Guyanese experience.

Guyana RainBow Foundation

Guyana RainBow Foundation (GuyBow) is an organization founded in 2000 whose mission is to support and strengthen the capacity of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer women.

Guyana RainBow Foundation (GuyBow) is an organization founded in 2000 whose mission is to support and strengthen the capacity of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer women, along with increasing the overall respect, acceptance of, and support for non-gender conforming persons and non-heteronormative sexual orientations in Guyanese society.

Guyana Trans United

Guyana Trans United is an organization that aims to improve the quality of life for the trans Guyanese community and to ensure that their rights are recognized in all domains.

Guyana Trans United is an organization that aims to improve the quality of life for the trans Guyanese community and to ensure that their rights are recognized in all domains through human rights advocacy, promoting respect and acceptance within the larger society, and empowering transgender individuals through creating and sustaining an environment free from all violence, prejudice, discrimination, and other negative and adverse conduct.

Our Circle

Our Circle is an organization founded in 2013 out of the need for a safe, supportive space for LGBT couples, parents, and families in Belize.

Our Circle is an organization founded in 2013 out of the need for a safe, supportive space for LGBT couples, parents, and families in Belize. As LGBT families are currently not legally recognized in Belize, the mission of Our Circle is to advance legal and lived equality for diverse families, and for those who wish to form them, through building community, changing hearts and minds, and driving policy change.

Meet our first-ever Fertile Ground Fund grantees!

In 2018, we launched our Fertile Ground Fund (FGF), supporting 43 organizations in the United States and around the world, with grants totaling $212,000. Join us in celebrating the work of all our incredible grantee partners, and read more about their work.


Photo credit: Lerman Montoya

It is with great excitement that we announce our first Fertile Ground Fund grantee partners!

Our first Fertile Ground Fund (FGF) cycle supported 43 organizations in the United States and around the world with grants totaling $212,000. The Fertile Ground Fund is a flexible funding source that provides resources based on the shifting needs and desires of Astraea’s grantee partners, giving them the ability to be more nimble and responsive. It supports activists to seize opportunities to seed and grow movement visions, ensuring organizations can prioritize collective liberation & sustainability towards building long-term movements.

Closing civil society spaces, increased violence against organizers & human rights defenders, heightened discrimination, and police violence against LGBTQI, Black, Brown, Indigenous, migrant, and other communities across the world make this an extremely challenging political time for grassroots activists. This first round of grants were an opportunity for us to resource and bolster groups’ capacity to respond to and strategize ways to resist oppressive state policies and practices quickly, strategically, and effectively.

The grants awarded in this first cycle support resistance strategies from projects intervening on the violence of policing to deepening cross-movement collaborations, ultimately generating local, national, regional, and global opportunities that strengthen organizational and movement capacities.

Our bold, brilliant Fertile Ground Fund grantee partners are:

  • Designing forums exclusively to strengthen LBQ women and movements around the world: The first Global Feminist LBQ Women’s* Conference is being organized in South Africa in July 2019 by a collective working group of 22 LBQ women* activists from across all regions of the world. It aims to create a space for activists and advocates to come together, share knowledge, exchange strategies, strengthen connections, mobilize resources, and take the lead in building a global LBQ women*s movement with the capacity to influence the world agenda on human rights, health, development.
  • Creating spaces for activists to strategize around the lived experiences of LGBTQI people, as well as around resource development and mobilization of movements: Tajassod-Qorras, a Lebanese queer trans embodiment initiative, will be collaborating with Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR)  to organize the ‘Tajassodat: Conversations to Advance Trans Rights and Justice across Muslim Societies’ convening in Nepal in May 2019, which hopes to increase resources and raise awareness around nascent trans rights and justice movements in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and South Asia & Southeast Asia (SSEA). The convening will break silos for trans Muslim activists often working in isolation, help them build formal relationships, and advance collaboration with other activists, as well as deepen critical analysis of successful approaches to advance trans justice in Muslim societies.
  • Combatting state criminalization efforts and fighting back against racist, homophobic, transphobic, nativist, and capitalist aggression from state forces: The Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance/La Alianza para Mobilizar Nuestra Resistencia (AMOR) is a rapid response network created by a coalition of People of Color-led organizations. The Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), in Rhode Island (USA), supported the founding of AMOR to respond to instances of “state hate” stemming from law enforcement and immigration. They are collaborating across Black, South Asian, Southeast Asian, undocumented, Indigenous, and refugee organizing to build up this alliance, which will provide communities with emergency legal services, culturally competent psychological services, and support for victims violence and for tracking incidents of hate crimes.

Please join us in celebrating the work of all our incredible grantee partners, and read more about their work in the links below.

Fertile Ground Fund Grantee Partners*

*Note: We do not publicize a number of our courageous grantee partners because of security threats they face in their local contexts, so organizations may be missing from this list.

#AbolishICE National Gathering of Queer and Trans Organizers
United States

Afritude
Dominican Republic

Aireana
Paraguay

Asociación Organizando Trans Diversidades (OTD)
Chile

Association Okvir
Bosnia & Herzegovina

Audre Lorde Project
United States

Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project
United States

BYP100
United States

Circuito de Innovación y Resiliencia Queer (CIRQ)
Puerto Rico

Colectiva Mujer y Salud
Dominican Republic

Colectivo No Tengo Miedo
Peru

Communities United Against Violence (CUAV)
United States

Communities United for Police Reform (CPR)
United States

Corporación Promoción de la Mujer/Taller de Comunicación Mujer
Ecuador

El/La Para Translatinas
United States

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
United States

European Lesbian* Conference
Europe – Regional

Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement
United States

Freedom Inc
United States

Freedom to Thrive (formerly Enlace)
United States

Fundación de Desarrollo Humano Integral CAUSANA
Ecuador

Girls for Gender Equity (GGE)
United States

Global Feminist LBQ Women’s* Conference
Netherlands

Humanity First Cameroon
Cameroon

Immigrant Youth Coalition
United States

Kohl Journal for Body and Gender Research
Lebanon

Las Nietas de Nonó
Puerto Rico

Law for Black Lives
United States

Mijente
United States

Movimiento Lesbia
Peru

Mujer y Mujer
Ecuador

Mujeres al Borde
Colombia

National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN)
United States

Pakasipiti Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe

Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM)
United States

Rainbow Identity Association
Botswana

Red Multicultural de Mujeres Trans de Guatemala (REDMMUTRANS)
Guatemala

Sayoni
Singapore

SisterReach
United States

Spark Reproductive Justice Now!
United States

Tajassod-Qorras
Lebanon

Dynamic Initiative for Healthcare & Human Rights (DIHHR),
Nigeria

Trans Queer Pueblo
United States

Voice of the Voiceless (VOVO)
Zimbabwe

West Africa Trans Forum (WATF)
Liberia

WHER Initiative
Nigeria

Young Women United
United States

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Fundacja Interakcja

Fundacja Interakcja was founded by Polish intersex activist Magda Rakita and the mother of an intersex child.

Fundacja Interakcja was founded by Polish intersex activist Magda Rakita and the mother of an intersex child. They give talks in different contexts, such as on “intersex101 + how to support intersex people at work” for Google Poland and the University of Wrocław. Fundacja Interakcjahas done many translations of YouTube videos on intersex issues into the Polish language. Their work is also specialized on families: they developed a chapter on intersex to be included in a brochure for a program run by Polish LGBT organization, KPH, for parents of LGBT+ youth, and are currently working on a booklet “How to talk to your child about intersex” for parents and guardians of children with intersex traits, as well as publishing a short story for children (about an intersex dragon) translated from Finnish.

Women With A Vision

Women With A Vision’s mission is to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and their communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their well being.

Women With A Vision’s mission is to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and their communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their well being. They accomplish this through relentless advocacy, health education, supportive services and community based participatory research.

They envision an environment in which there is no war against women’s bodies, in which women have a space to come together and share their stories. A place in which women are empowered to make decisions concerning their own bodies and lives, where women have the necessary support to realize their hope, dreams, and full potential.

This organization is supported through the LGBTQ Racial Justice Fund, which is housed at Astraea.