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 The Global Fund for Women seeds, strengthens and links women's rights organizations worldwide working to gain freedom from poverty, violence and discrimination. Since its inception in 1987, the Global Fund has provided significant support to groups engaged in radio and media work. These groups are striving to increase women's access to communications technology and the media. They are using radio, television, print media, the Internet and theater as tools to educate the public about women's human rights issues.
Women's radio and media projects across the world capture and amplify the voices of women and girls striving for change. These projects reach out to women in very personal ways -- by becoming a familiar voice in the home or a beloved figure on the television screen; by presenting a fresh way of seeing and critiquing the images of women on billboards, in articles and magazines; and by presenting the new ways of living through empowerment, social change and development.
In partnership with media producers Julie Parker Benello and Dorothy Abbott, the Global Fund has created a Field of Interest Fund that uses media as a principal strategy to advance women's human rights worldwide. The Women's Media Fund will help support a variety of media projects including radio programs and stations, film and video production, media training, newspapers and magazines, website and Internet projects, television production and programs, and street theater.
Recently film producer Julie Parker Benello visited the Women's Media Centre in Phnom Penh with Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, and Mu Sochua, Cambodian advisor to the Fund.
Julie Parker Benello writes:
"We were all on a call-in radio show where the topic was women's human rights. We learned that one of the women we met in Phnom Penh who is now a garment worker had been abused by her husband. She heard one of the Women's Media Centre radio shows and learned about the Women's Rape Crisis Center. As a result, she left her husband, learned vocational sewing skills, and is now a union leader in the garment factory where she works."
The Global Fund for Women provided funding to all of the organizations mentioned in Julie's story. This is a testament to the fact that media can play a vital role in disseminating critical information to women in need around the world.
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