The Fund for Haitian Women Aims to Raise $1 Million by 2026 to Support Gender Justice, Local Expertise, and Community-Driven Solutions Amid Haiti’s Crisis
The Brooklyn Haitian community has made a historic stride with the launch of the first feminist fund in the Caribbean, aimed at empowering Haitian and Caribbean women through feminist values, sustainable development, and gender justice. Known as the Fund for Haitian Women (FHW), this initiative is spearheaded by the Haitian Women’s Collective (HWC), a Brooklyn-based organization deeply rooted in local leadership and feminist philanthropy. The fund represents a critical step toward reshaping the philanthropic landscape in Haiti and the broader Caribbean region by directing resources and decision-making power to women-led organizations.
The FHW aims to raise one million dollars by April 2026 to provide flexible, multi-year grants that help women-led groups design and implement locally driven solutions. This fund prioritizes accelerating women’s leadership, building organizational capacity, and scaling programs that improve community welfare. Haiti’s women and girls face monumental challenges such as increasing gender-based violence, forced displacement, poor maternal health, and lack of stable safety nets—problems exacerbated by ongoing political instability and underfunding of local initiatives despite substantial international aid over the past decade.
The Haitian Women’s Collective’s creation of the FHW follows three years of grassroots consultations, grantmaking, and coalition-building with Haitian feminists, community leaders, and development experts. Supported by prominent partners including MADRE, the New York Women’s Foundation, Fondation Chanel, Mama Cash, and the Imago Dei Fund, the FHW embodies trust-based philanthropy emphasizing sovereignty, solidarity, and equity. Already, the fund has delivered over $200,000 in grants and emergency aid to projects supporting girls’ education, reproductive health access, and responses to gender-based violence.
Beyond fundraising, the initiative strives to challenge the traditional top-down development aid model by emphasizing local knowledge, feminist ideologies, and community empowerment. It also highlights the dire need to focus on marginalized groups, notably Black women and girls, who receive a disproportionately low share of global philanthropic resources. In Haiti, for instance, Black women-led organizations have historically struggled with underfunding and political marginalization, despite their vital role in crisis response and peacebuilding.
The fund was launched amid a backdrop of escalating violence and political instability in Haiti, which have strained local civil society and nonprofit operations. These crises have heightened the urgency for feminist-led, community-centered approaches capable of addressing not only immediate emergencies but also long-term structural inequalities. The FHW advocates anti-militarism and respect for Haitian sovereignty in foreign aid, pushing back against the influx of foreign-made arms that fuel violence and instability.
The Brooklyn Haitian women behind this pioneering fund have galvanized a transnational movement linking diaspora activism with on-the-ground organizing. Their work demonstrates how diaspora communities can leverage connections, resources, and influence to enact meaningful social change in their countries of origin. The fund’s flexible approach to financing and its commitment to feminist values positions it as a model for feminist philanthropy in the Caribbean, setting a precedent for future funds seeking to center women’s leadership and autonomy in development.
In summary, the Fund for Haitian Women is a landmark initiative launched by Brooklyn Haitian women that brings feminist, locally led funding to Haitian and Caribbean women’s organizations. With ambitions to raise $1 million by 2026, this fund is dedicated to combating gender inequities, empowering women leaders, and fostering social justice through innovative partnerships and community rooted solutions. It reflects a transformative shift in philanthropic practice toward equity, accountability, and solidarity in one of the most impacted regions for women’s rights and development.
