New Field Foundation
OVERVIEW: The New Field Foundation has completed its funding for its gender equality program in Africa and now advises a conservation fund, which supports “[s]eeds, soil, and culture.”
IP TAKE: New Field supports indigenous farmers in developing, rural regions to transform “[l]ocal and regional food systems through the power of biodiversity and biocultural heritage.” Grants here are place-based.
PROFILE: Since 2003, the New Field Foundation has been committed to helping “[w]omen and their families to overcome poverty, violence, and injustice in their communities;” However, New Field completed its Rural Women Creating change program in 2016. The foundation has shifted foci and now concentrates on supporting “[s]mallholder women and men farmers who sow and conserve local seeds, and manage their land as a living soul.” It ultimately seeks to emphasize and bolster “[t]he knowledge, values, and leadership that inspire the practice of agroecology worldwide.”
Grants for Global Development, Sustainable Agriculture and Women
New Field’s Seeds, Soil, and Culture fund supports local farmers through organizations that “[p]rioritize local farming knowledge, promote local culture, and equitably support women and men.” RSF Social Finance manages the fund, while New Field advises it. Grants through the Seeds, Soil, and Culture program supports farmers who “[b]ring their culture to the forefront, who illustrate how their beliefs, values, language, ethics, art, music, cuisine, ways of learning, and traditional farming practices embody agroecology at its best, who recognize that the spiritual unseen can fruitfully bridge living soils with living seeds on the farm.”
New Field also has several place-based programs that center on global development and intersect with violence prevention, long-term poverty solutions and women’s rights. Among them, New Field makes grants for work that focuses on Casamance, Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) and Niger River Basin (Burkina Faso, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire).
Grants for women focus on broadly advancing women’s rights, especially in Africa. Past grantees include Women Thrive Worldwide, Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), and Women’s World Banking (WWB).
Important Grant Details:
The fund supports organizations that, according to New Field, reflect “[p]rogressive leadership, skilled staff, solid management structures, good communication and accounting systems, adequately funded programs, capacity to leverage other funds, and work that exemplifies the holistic approach of agroecology in practice.”
In its past grantmaking, the foundation’s grants have ranged widely, from $10,000 to $200,000. For a deeper look into the organizations New Field Funds, look over its grants awarded list.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications or requests for funding.
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