The importance of funding wellness
Burn-out and lack of self-care critically undermine the work of so many activists and hinder movements, aggravated further by lack of funder support for much needed reflection and healing time. Fighting daily for social change in the face of injustice, especially as a minority or disadvantaged group, requires emotional and physical labour which can often take a toll on wellbeing and mental health.
At the heart of the With and For Girls approach is the belief that transnational solidarity, shared resilience and genuine trust can propel these movements to whichever objectives they set for themselves. This belief was the starting point for a reflection that we led as a Collective on which elements of our approach we were actively supporting and which others we could do more to bolster.
As a funding Collective comprising 11 donors, we had never previously funded any initiatives to support organisations in a more holistic way. However, after connecting with a With and For Girls Award Winner foccussed on child sexual violence, we discussed their impactful experience engaging in a months-long healing and couselling session with all team members and staff, many of whom had been working on issues of sexual violence for years. We were moved to hear the story of our partner, who in turn encouraged us to make this opportunity available to as many With and For Girls Award Winners as possible. And so we did!
The time was auspicious, as 2018 offered us the opportunity to invest in new and exciting programmes, all of which would feed into our vision of enabling change, solidarity and trust on a global scale. We reached out to the wellbeing coach our partner had worked with, and came up with one of our most innovative approaches yet: The wellbeing coaching programme.
We contracted the direct provision of a 6 month wellbeing coaching and counselling programme with Carmen Morcos from Impact Visionary for the Executive Directors of With and For Girls Award Winners. The programme was made available in English and Spanish and was carried out through online sessions hosted by the coach.
“I’m seeing that different organisations see [self care] as a different priority and rank it in a different way. I think that unfortunately a lot of this is because of resources. A lot of organisations prioritise strategizing, monitoring and evaluation, comms, because that is traditionally where people have funded and while there is more support going into how to support activists on a human level, I don’t think it’s enough. There are very few funders who actually put the money behind the talk.”— Carmen Morcos
We had an overwhelming response; most Award Winners were keen to participate and ultimately, 15 were able to complete the full 6 months of coaching sessions.
We, and the coach, learnt a lot during this process but most importantly, we gathered incredible insights from participants: the feedback was like none we had seen before, resoundingly supportive of a wellbeing, healing and coaching programme directed towards civil society organisations, movements and activists. Many participants had never had the opportunity of talking about themselves in an open, reflective way, with many sharing that self-care often made them feel selfish. Many had spent their careers and lives supporting others, building an enabling environment for them, but seldom had taken a moment for themselves.
We all re-discovered that practicing personal healing and wellbeing is the opposite of a selfish act: it leads to working better with others, it helps individuals become exceptional leaders or co-creators, it builds solidarity and leads to whole groups working together to benefit communities in a thoughtful, effective way.
Activists and leaders are working in an environment of continuous stress, pain and anxiety caused by closing civil society space worldwide and the inflexibility of the existing funding system, and because of this support for wellbeing coaching is now more needed than ever. Technology enables us to invest in programmes such as this at a global scale, and practices such as the Wellbeing Coaching programme, the Healing Solidarity conference or FRIDA’s Happiness Manifestx, among others, support the need to do so.
For more information on the programme and to help us spread this far and wide, please contact stefano@wearepurposeful.org
With and For Girls is a unique collaboration between 11 funders — Comic Relief, EMpower, FRIDA, MamaCash, Nike Foundation, NoVo Foundation, Plan International UK, Purposeful, Stars Foundation, Global Fund for Children and Global Fund for Women — united by a common belief that girls are agents of change.
