Intersex Human Rights Fund

For over 35 years, we have supported brave and innovative organizations and projects in effective and strategic social change work. The first grantmaker to hundreds of organizations, Astraea plays a catalytic role for LGBTQI organizations across the globe. By seeding nascent ideas, groups, and movements, these initial grants have grown into long-term partnerships and coalitions.

In 2012, Astraea awarded $1,310,624 in 152 grants to 113 organizations and 16 individuals across the globe. Astraea awarded $519,158 in 87 grants to 73 U.S. grantees through the U.S. Fund and $791,466 reached 56 organizations internationally in 65 grants through the International Fund.

Our programmatic areas of focus sustain and mobilize grantee partners who tackle persistent issues such as freedom from violence, racial justice, access to healthcare, self-determination, parental rights, police reform, gender justice, cultural change, and more.

Human Rights
Changing Laws. Political education. Monitoring police and government practices. What do these things have in common? This is the work Astraea grantee partners around the globe are doing to ensure Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity (SOGI) human rights protections.

Movement & Network Building
An important part of our work is to develop and foster alliances and relationships are the local, regional, and national levels. These interconnections lay the ground for sustainable global movements and widespread social change that prioritizes the needs of LGBTQI communities.

Arts & Cultural Advocacy
Astraea supports activist artists, writers, poets, cultural change-agents, and arts organizations who are unafraid to speak out for justice. We value their power to transform society by speaking up, offering true, diverse images of LGBTQI people and motivating us to continue even in the face of incredible odds.

Mobile Global
Astraea works to keep our grantee partners connected and keep resources flowing around the globe. We build regional and cross-regional relationships that break isolation. We help grantee partners develop shared agendas. We respond immediately to international emergencies.

The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice is proud to announce the launch of a new Intersex Human Rights Fund to honor the resilience, creativity and growth of intersex activism and ensure the human rights of intersex people. We recognize that the entrenched practice of organizing the world into the sex binary and gender binary has alarming and rights-violating consequences for intersex bodies. People with intersex variations face invisibility, stigma, discrimination and violence. Intersex babies and children are widely subjected to “normalizing,” non-consensual, harmful surgeries and other medical interventions, with life-long consequences, including sterilization and genital mutilation. There are few legal frameworks to protect intersex people from multiple forms of discrimination and institutional violence. While intersex activism has been growing around the world, intersex issues and communities remain starkly under-funded, receiving less than a fraction of 1% of global foundation funding for LGBTQI people and/or women and girls. 

The Intersex Human Rights Fund supports organizations, projects and timely campaigns led by intersex activists working to ensure the human rights, bodily autonomy, physical integrity and self-determination of intersex people. This Fund is made possible through the generous support of seed donors Kobi Conaway and Andrew Owen, and a leadership contribution from the Arcus Foundation. Given the dearth of funding to intersex issues globally, intersex groups/projects based anywhere in the world are eligible to apply.

Moreinfo: http://www.astraeafoundation.org/apply-for-a-grant/about-astraea-s-funds