A first-of-its-kind collaborative funding initiative, the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains, launches today, bringing together PVH Corp., our peers, and NGO partners to invest in the health, safety, and economic resilience of the women who form the backbone of global value chains. The Fund aims to raise at least US$10 million in pooled funding over three years to support locally driven solutions to the systemic problems that make women more vulnerable to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Resilience Fund is a joint initiative of BSR, the United Nations Foundation’s Universal Access Project, and Women Win/Win-Win Strategies in close collaboration with founding corporate partners and investors PVH Foundation, Gap Foundation, H&M Foundation, The VF Foundation and Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation.
“The Resilience Fund is an opportunity for PVH to directly address the disproportionate impacts COVID-19 has had on women in supply chain communities, and empower them with the resources needed to move forward. This innovative fund will help strengthen women’s long-term economic resilience, health, and well-being and will revolutionize corporate philanthropy with its democratized and locally-driven approach. We’re excited to partner with our peers and NGO partners to maximize our collective impact and drive systemic change,” Marissa Pagnani McGowan, Chief Sustainability Officer, PVH Corp.
This innovative collaboration provides unrestricted funds to organizations in South Asia, trusting local and regional women’s funds, women-led organizations, and feminist leaders to know what their communities need and enabling them to direct resources to yield the strongest outcomes. The Fund is embarking on its first phase in South Asia, with planned expansions to additional regions by early 2022.
A representative advisory board places grassroots and feminist leaders as equal partners with investors in determining how funds should be expended, using real-time feedback and learning to respond flexibly to changing realities on the ground. Global Fund for Women, the Naz Foundation, Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds, and Women’s Fund Asia will serve as representatives of women’s funds and grassroots women’s organizations on the advisory board.
The Fund is open to investors across a wide range of sectors, offering them the opportunity to build new, long-term connections with women’s funds and locally-led organizations that focus on women's safety, security, and sexual and reproductive health as long-term drivers of economic resilience.