About Us

Vision

We work to make sure that both new and established feminist groups in the MENA region have access to more and better funding to continue and develop their work, articulate their own priorities and produce local knowledge.

Mission

The Doria Feminist Fund is a feminist fund that strengthens activists, institutions, and movements through grantmaking, capacity sharing, convening spaces, mutual solidarity and support. DFF ensures that feminist movements have sufficient and flexible resources to identify and determine priorities independently, develop and sustain their activism, produce knowledge by and for their constituencies, and advocate for the rights of all women and LBTQ+ individuals and groups in their countries.

As a feminist fund, DFF mobilizes financial, political, and technical resources from a wide range of funders, and engages in advocacy and education to build an ecosystem of donors that understand the political, economic, cultural, and social context of activists across the region.

Strategic Vision

We introduce you to Zaha

In the Arabic language, "zaha" is a verb that means to grow, bloom and blossom. It also means to shine or light up. It is the best expression for one of our boldest endeavours yet.

Born from a collective thought process with dedicated feminist activists, groups and organizations across the Middle East and North Africa, Zaha is a glimmer of hope amid exceptionally difficult times, and proof of our continued struggle, togetherness and solidarity in the face of oppression and violence.

Zaha is the tomorrow we dream of. It is a fruit waiting to blossom, and our answer to the question: "Where are the feminists in what is happening in our region?" Here we are, marching together towards a feminist future of justice, freedom and joy.

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Our Values

  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Solidarity
  • Holistic Approach
  • Sustainability
  • Visibility
  • Respect
  • Co-creation
  • Radical Trust

History

  1. Feminist funding as a Political and Strategic Issue

    Despite the rich and diverse scholarship and practice of MENA feminists, their efforts are often not prioritized in global convenings and platforms, and funding is piecemeal and inadequate. Feminists have consistently maintained that to advance a more just and feminist world, radical shifts are needed in capitalist models of wealth distribution and the operations of philanthropic, development and government funders. They have worked to advocate from within mainstream funding ecosystems and have established their own funds, built new mechanisms to move resources and developed evidence that demonstrates that women can manage substantial amounts of money.

  2. Through Collective Labour and Conflict: The Birth of Doria Feminist Fund

    Building on many conversations about the importance of creating an autonomous funding mechanism based in the MENA region, in 2019 a group of Egyptian activists initiated consultations about the political and practical implications of establishing an independent women's fund. These conversations were supported by the efforts of different activists from the region who compiled scoping studies, previous recommendations and safety and security assessments related to how to move money in ways that did not put into harm the communities it was intended for.

    Born of the collective activism of many different feminists in the region, DFF was officially launched on March 8, 2021 in recognition of International Women's Day, with the long-term vision of advancing equitable, inclusive, and just social change by building an autonomous feminist funding ecosystem accountable to movements in the region.

Read Doria's story

Board

The Doria Feminist Fund is governed by a Board of Directors who give their time, expertise and networks on a voluntary basis. Day to day work is carried out by a small group of feminist consultants and advisors. DFF also relies on a core group of feminist organizations and scholars from the region to provide much valued coaching and mentoring.

  • Lina Abou-Habib

    Chair of Board

    Lina Abou-Habib is the Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut, where she also teaches undergraduate and graduate gender courses at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She serves as the Chair of the Collective for Research and Training for Development - Action (CRTD.A) and as a Board Member for Gender at Work, as well as the MENA strategic advisor for the Global Fund for Women. She is also a member of the editorial board of the Gender and Development journal published by Oxfam.

    She was previously the Executive Director of Women's Learning Partnership and, before that, the Director of CRTD.A. She has worked extensively with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and with several international and regional organisations, designing and managing programmes in the Middle East and North Africa on issues related to gender and citizenship, economy, trade, and leadership. As a global gender consultant, Abou-Habib has worked in most countries of the MENA region, in West Africa and the Caucasus.

  • Fahima Hashim

    Board Member

    Founder and former director of Salmmah Women's Resource Centre, Fahima Hashim has been a feminist activist for over 25 years, experienced in action research and feminist training in the areas of women and peace, violence against women, and feminist movement building. She has devoted her life to promoting radical change for women and young women and their place in society.

    She is a board member of Nazra for Feminist Studies, working with women in the MENA region, and an advisory board member for the Doria Feminist Fund. She served as the Director of Salmmah Women's Resource Centre, which was forced to close by the Sudanese government in June 2014.

  • Sussan Tahmasebi

    Board Member

    Sussan Tahmasebi has been working to strengthen civil society and advocate for women's rights in Iran and across the MENA region for 20 years. She currently serves as the Executive Director of FEMENA, an organization that supports women human rights defenders, their organizations and movements, with a particular focus on transitioning contexts or contexts of limited civil society space in the MENA and Asia regions.

    Previously, she was the Director of the MENA and Asia region at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) from 2011 to 2017, an organization she co-founded. Between 1999 and 2010 she was based in Iran, where she co-founded the Iran Civil Society Training and Research Center. She is also a founding member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grassroots effort working to end gender-biased laws in Iran.

    Tahmasebi is Iranian and American by birth and is fluent in both English and Farsi. She resides in Washington, DC.

  • Kishani Cader

    Board Member

    Kishani Cader (she/her), ACMA, CGMA is a finance professional with extensive and diverse experience in finance and governance across both the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. Her expertise extends to overall financial management, governance, organizational management, donor and stakeholder relationship management, and strategic planning and implementation.

    Through 18 years of experience in diverse senior management positions, Kishani has fine-tuned her professional skills to focus on establishing a balance between governance while ensuring the core interests of the funded constituencies are retained. She currently serves as the Director of Finance, Compliance and Operations at Women's Fund Asia.

  • Remie Abi-Farrage

    Board Member

    Remie Abi-Farrage is the Senior Program Officer in the Global Programs at the Equality Fund, where she supports the organization's grantmaking and partner accompaniment strategies with global partners.

    Remie is deeply connected to feminist and youth movements globally, with valuable local and international experience in human rights philanthropy, advocacy, programming and social justice organizing. She believes in shifting power through flexible core funding and respecting the autonomy and work of local organizations and groups as main implementers, while donor organizations act as facilitators.

  • Senda Ben Jebara

    Board Member

    Senda Ben Jebara is a queer feminist from Tunisia, currently based in Montreal, Canada. She has been involved in political organizing and in feminist and queer movements for the past 10 years. She sat on the board of Chouf and Mawjoudin, two LBTQ+ organizations based in Tunisia, and co-organized the International Feminist Art Festival Chouftouhonna and the Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival.

    A firm believer in intersectionality, she has been involved in several projects across the Middle East and North Africa focusing on LBTQ+ rights as well as migrant and refugee rights. She worked with FRIDA, The Young Feminist Fund, where she focused on online learning and on supporting young feminist organizing in the South West Asia and North Africa region, and consulted with Article 19 on LBTQ+ research projects. She is passionate about cooking and discovering new cuisines.

Founder

Mozn Hassan

Mozn Hassan

Founder

Mozn Hassan is an Egyptian feminist activist and the founder of Nazra for Feminist Studies. She has received many awards, among them the Global Fund for Women's inaugural Charlotte Bunch Human Rights Award in 2013.

Hassan and Nazra were jointly awarded one of the Right Livelihood Awards, often called the "Alternative Nobel Peace Prize", in 2016 for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination. The decision was made to dedicate the totality of this award to the creation of the Doria Feminist Fund.