Leading From The South Women’s Fund Asia (WFA) is a regional women’s fund, committed to supporting women and trans* people to enhance and strengthen their access to human rights. Established in 2004 as the South Asia Women’s Fund, the fund was created to address the lack of resources for smaller grassroots organisations in South Asia. In March 2018, SAWF transformed into Women’s Fund Asia, with a bigger mandate to fund rights-based work across 18 countries in Asia. Our core mandate is to support women’s and trans* rights groups and activists in Asia, address the non-availability of resources for women's and trans* rights work in the region, and support strategies and interventions designed, implemented and led by women and trans* people. We provide fiscal and technical support to our partners, working to advance women’s and trans* rights in their contexts. We aim to move towards developing a regional mandate, which is informed by national and sub-regional realities, and is responsive to the rights and needs of individual women or trans* people. Leading from the South (LFS) is a special fund created to resource women’s and trans* rights activism in the Global South (over 4 years), initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It supports activism devised, implemented, and led by women’s and trans* rights organisations in the Global South. Through grant-making, capacity building, and other resourcing, LFS will strengthen women’s organisations, movements, and networks—especially their advocacy capacity. The fund is being implemented by four women’s funds: three regional funds—African Women’s Development Fund (Africa and the Middle East), Fondo Mujeres del Sur (Latin America and the Caribbean) and Women’s Fund Asia (Asia)—and one global fund, AYNI, the Indigenous Women’s Fund. Alliance building and investing in strengthening capacities will be a key component of the programme. The facilitation of such spaces (at the national, sub-regional and regional level) by WFA will aim to ensure collective reflections, learnings, and building cross-country and cross-region solidarities. The focus will be to link the voices and experience of those working at the local level with those at the national and regional level. Addressing Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals – working towards gender equality through empowering women and girls – is a key focus of the Leading from the South Programme. To effectively work towards achieving the SDG Goal in an expansive and sustainable manner, it is critical to have a framework, rooted in the voices, experiences, and leadership of women and trans* people? The programme framework is rooted within the three main principles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – Substantive Equality, Non-Discrimination, and State Obligation. The grants are aimed to address 3 key overall objectives: 1. Addressing all forms of violence against women, girls, and trans* people and advancing women and trans* people’s bodily integrity and autonomy. 2. Protecting and ensuring full economic rights and justice for women, girls, and trans* people. 3. Expanding democratic space, sustaining inclusive governance, and ensuring equal participation of women and trans* people. The target group of this program is grassroots, intermediate and large southern women´s rights organizations (SWROs). Special consideration will be given for outreach to women and trans* people in/from marginalised communities facing multiple discrimination—from minority and indigenous communities facing ethnic and caste-based violence; LBTQ communities; women and trans* people in stigmatised and informal labour; refugees; internally displaced; women and trans* people with disabilities; from conflict- affected areas, etc.