Nearly a decade ago, Resource Equity was founded with the mission of empowering women through advancing their land and resource rights. We believed then, as we do now, that for women’s rights to land and natural resources to be effective at enabling economic and social change, they must be equitable, secure, and empowering for women, their families, and their communities.
We firmly ground all our work in the belief that the “how” matters: We start with women’s voices, agency, needs, and aspirations; we work in partnership and collaboration with those at the forefront of change; and we focus on “what works” – measurable strategies that secure women’s land rights in practice.
Over the past ten years, our small but mighty non-profit has helped significantly expand women’s access to land and resources in communities round the world. Unfortunately, we’ve also discovered that our impact may be limited by our size. Funding and charitable giving priorities are highly dynamic, and we have recently realized that there may be other, more sustainable ways to pursue our mission.
So it is with some sadness that we share that we’ve made the difficult decision to close Resource Equity.
- Launched the Women’s Land Rights Institute: A learning space focused on strategies for securing women’s land rights in practice with nearly 130 people who work in over 30 countries around the world, representing policy makers, donors, NGOs, INGOs, CSOs, local councils, chiefs, elders, local leaders, activists, lawyers, academics, and researchers.
- Built and maintained the Women’s Land Rights Library (aka LandWise): The source for family, land, and other laws and secondary materials on women’s land rights from around the globe.
- Provided expert gender and land technical assistance to large land, agriculture, and food security projects and advised donors, development banks, INGOs, government, and academics on protecting and promoting women’s land rights in Australia, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Turkmenistan, and Uganda.
- Distilled evidence on the effectiveness of strategies to improve women’s land rights, including inheritance reforms, land titling and registration, and formalization of informal settlements on urban lands.
- Documented promising practices on gender and collectively held lands (6 countries), women on communal lands and resources, gender equity and REDD+ programming and carbon funding (16 countries), and gender, land and extractive investments (3 countries).
- Supported ground-breaking research through the Women’s Land Rights Research Consortium.
- Promoted our proven model for improving women’s land tenure security in customary tenure settings, Starting with Women.
We’re in the process of investigating new homes for the Women’s Land Rights Institute and the LandWise legal database, and we’ll update you as soon as we have any news.
While this was a difficult decision to make, we believe that it will enable us to remain focused on our primary mission: Empowering women – because empowered women change the world.
Thank you so much for your support! We look forward to connecting with you in our new roles in the future.