Invest in Trust, Invest in Women
Women peacebuilders consistently identify insufficient funding and resources as the biggest challenge to sustaining peace.
In response to persistent funding gaps, ICAN co-designed the Innovative Peace Fund (IPF) with WASL partners and key donors in 2015.
The IPF is the first and only independent, multi-donor, global grantmaking mechanism wholly dedicated to providing financial support and technical assistance to women-led peacebuilding organizations in countries affected by violent conflict, extremism, and militarism.
The IPF recognizes that our partners’ positions as trusted community members and leaders with local knowledge make them uniquely able to foster and sustain positive peace.
What We Fund
Through the IPF, ICAN provides holistic support to local women-led peacebuilding organizations.
We value our partners’ agency and creativity in determining and developing interventions that are responsive to the true needs of their communities.
Since 2013, we have disbursed $11,132,037 through 235 grants to 65 women-led peacebuilding organizations in 26 countries.
We frame our appetite for risk as our appetite for trust–trust in our partners’ wisdom and judgment, and the access and trust they have within their communities.
How We Fund
Feminist Funding Advocacy
We develop analyses and document lessons learned on different modalities of grantmaking to women’s peacebuilding organizations to inform and improve international and multilateral funding policies and programs.
Learn more about our grantmaking:
ICAN’s Innovative Peace Fund
Ep 6 #ICANForum22 Interview Series: Clotilda Andiensa with France Bognon
Ep 8 #ICANForum22 Interview Series: Halima Mohamed with France Bognon
Other organizations impose their agendas on us. ICAN does not. It listens to our needs.
The IPF’s Impact: Innovative Peace Stories
Across Syria, communities are finding ways to reconnect after years of war through dialogue, storytelling, art, and collective action. Mobaderoon’s Local Peace Committees demonstrate why lasting peace begins within communities themselves.
Nina Potarska, a member of the ICAN-spearheaded Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership, is currently at sea with the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civilian-led mission organized with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, en route to Gaza.
مدينة البصرة في جنوب العراق، المدينة التي تضررت طويلا من الحرب وقلة الاستثمارات، تواجه تهديدات متزايدة بسبب خطاب الكراهية والتطرف وتآكل الثقة بين المواطنين والمؤسسات. وغالبا ما يقع الشباب -وخاصة الشابات- في قلب هذه التوترات، في عالم تتقاطع فيه المضايقات والتحرش الالكتروني مع الواقع. وفي مثل هذه البيئة، تتبنى جمعية الفردوس العراقية (الفردوس) نهجا جديدا […]
In March 2020, ICAN and its global network of women-led peacebuilding organizations, WASL, launched the She Builds Peace (SBP) campaign.
Iraqi Al-Firdaws Society (Al-Firdaws) is taking a new approach to peacebuilding. Their project, Horizon: Promoting Community Peace, supported by ICAN’s Innovative Peace Fund (IPF), brings together youth, local security forces, and civil society actors to address violent extremism through dialogue, education, and community-based action.
ICAN convened 20 members of WASL in Lisbon for the “Our Strategies, Our Peace” Writers’ Workshop. This unique gathering provided a secure and creative space for women peacebuilders to share their strategies, experience, expertise, and stories from conflict and crisis contexts.
In South Sudan, a nation where peace has long remained fragile and democratic progress uncertain, women are stepping forward to shape the future of their country. Long excluded from the corridors of power, they are forging their own movement for lasting change.
Since gaining independence in 1948, Myanmar has been shaped by relentless conflict, political upheaval, and deep-seated resistance. Ethnic divisions, decades of military rule, and systemic gender inequality have compounded the struggles faced by women across the country. Yet, despite oppression and violence, Myanmar’s women have consistently led movements for justice and change, standing at the forefront of resistance.
ICAN facilitated a four-day peer-to-peer learning exchange in Indonesia between WASL members Empatiku and Odessa Organization for Women’s Development, from Mosul, Iraq.