Vanessa Ishimwe, Founder of FUSE Women Initiative, focuses on creating employment and educational opportunities for youth, especially women and girls, by equipping them with hands-on skills and scholarships.
Meet Anita, a resilient Congolese refugee in Nakivale, Uganda, juggling motherhood and advocacy as she prepares to welcome her third child. Alongside the responsibilities of motherhood, Anita runs an organisation that supports single mothers with basic hygiene needs such as sanitary pads, soap, and clothes. She collects these items from well-wishers and from members of the association she started, bringing women together in an effort to help others who face the same challenges she does.
Over a decade, her unwavering dedication has transformed the lives of countless single mothers facing similar hardships.
One day, she meets another refugee-led organisation that tells her about an opportunity in Kampala where donors gather to engage with refugee-led organisations. These conversations have been taking place for four consecutive years, and this year will be the last one. Despite having worked with women in her community for a decade, Anita has never heard of such a space. Her days have always been spent at home and within the settlement, balancing the demands of raising children while continuing her work with other women.
When she learns that the conference is particularly interested in women leaders, she decides to apply even though the deadline has already passed. To her surprise, she is accepted and informed that she must travel to Kampala within two days. Another challenge immediately arises. Finding someone to stay with her children on such short notice proves extremely difficult, leaving Anita with a painful choice between bringing her children along to a professional space or staying home and missing what could be a life-changing opportunity.
At the last minute, her neighbor agrees to look after the older child, allowing Anita to make the journey to Kampala. She arrives a day late, only to learn that the donors who were most interested in meeting women-led organisations have already left. Even so, a small opportunity remains.
During the conference, she meets John Doe, a representative from an organisation that works with refugee-led groups. John listens as Anita explains the work she has built in Nakivale and expresses genuine admiration for her initiative and commitment to her community. However, there is a condition that Anita cannot meet. John’s organisation only funds groups that have previously worked with other donors.
Anita has never had a donor. The only support she has ever relied on is the trust and solidarity of her community.
After four days of workshops and discussions, Anita returns home without any funding to show for the sacrifice she made in leaving her children behind. When she arrives, she discovers that her child has not been properly fed for two days.
She begins to ask herself difficult questions. If she must first have a donor before she can receive support from another donor, who will ever be her first donor? Who will trust her the way her community has trusted her?
Another question quietly follows. Why should she return to spaces that require her to leave her home and her children behind, only to come back with disappointment?
Anita is hypothetical, but her story reflects the lived reality of many women. Across refugee communities, women are already contributing in significant ways to their societies despite having very limited resources. In many displacement settings, women make up nearly half, and often more, of small-scale economic activity, while women-led organisations are frequently the first responders to community needs such as healthcare, education, and protection. Yet despite this, less than 2 percent of global humanitarian funding is directed to local and national organisations, and an even smaller fraction reaches refugee-led and women-led groups directly.
At the same time, they face multiple and overlapping barriers shaped by gender, displacement, poverty, and caregiving responsibilities, with very few support systems designed to meet them where they are.
Anita’s experience is not an isolated incident but a reflection of how the current funding ecosystem is structured. Many refugee-led organisations are expected to demonstrate prior donor funding, formal systems, and institutional track records before they can access support, yet these are capacities that can only be built through funding in the first place. This creates a cycle where those closest to communities remain excluded, not because they lack impact, but because they lack the opportunity to prove it in ways that the system recognises.
This is why community-based intermediaries play such an important role. Organisations like Fuse exist to bridge this gap by supporting women-led refugee organisations through relationships built on trust and on the real work that women are already doing in their communities. When resources are channelled in ways that recognise existing leadership rather than waiting for perfect institutional structures, women are able to grow their initiatives without being forced into systems that were never designed for them.
However, real change requires a shift in how funding is designed and delivered. Donors must be willing to provide first-time funding to women-led refugee organisations, even in the absence of prior donor history, and to allocate dedicated resources for capacity strengthening, including financial systems, safeguarding, and governance. This also means working through trusted intermediaries that are rooted in the communities they aim to support, and simplifying application and reporting requirements so they reflect the realities of grassroots organisations.
Equally important, if donors are serious about including women in decision-making spaces, then funding must also enable their participation in practical ways. This includes covering costs for childcare, providing safe and accessible spaces for nursing mothers, and designing convenings that take into account the lived realities of women who are balancing leadership with caregiving responsibilities. Without these considerations, inclusion remains aspirational rather than real.
When resources are provided in ways that acknowledge potential alongside existing impact, women are able to lead more sustainably, with dignity and confidence. Investing in women at the community level is not charity, it is a strategic decision that leads to stronger and more resilient communities.
Anita’s story does not have to end in disappointment. It can instead become a story of what is possible when trust is extended early and intentionally.
Those who believe in a different future have a role to play in building it. Join us if you dare to imagine a world where women are given the opportunity to truly thrive.