UAF A&P is proud to introduce their new Co-Lead Vinita Sahasranaman, who along with Virisila Buadromo will begin a new chapter of feminist co-leadership that began in late September.

In Vinita’s own words: "I have over 18 years of experience of learning from and leading work on issues of women's rights, gender, sexual and reproductive health and rights, with adolescents and youth. I have worked in India, South Asia and East Africa with national and global implementing organisations and philanthropy. I have worked the longest with CREA [https://creaworld.org/]  in Delhi and in Nairobi. I started my work at CREA with a program that built feminist leadership among grassroots women-led organisations. One of my personal highlights was managing a program that addressed violence against women and trans people. I also worked with The YP Foundation, a youth-led organisation that builds youth leadership on issues of gender justice, sexuality rights, health equity and social inclusion in India. This was also an interesting experience - coming at a time of leadership transition and helping build the organisation in its 2.0 version. After this, I was able to further diversify my experience and learning by working with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) to build the Adolescence portfolio, and then worked with a private tech company called Quilt.AI. These two experiences were unique and very different than my other work with feminist and rights based organisations. I learnt a lot!

Apart from Vinita’s impressive resume, we are excited that her work and lived experiences will add value to what we are collectively trying to achieve as a feminist fund working on rapid response grant making and strengthening resilience of feminist and social movements in Asia and the Pacific. She is keen to learn how she can help us think through different ways in which we can support WHRDs and non binary HRDs in Asia and the Pacific.

Viri and Vinita are also clear that this new co-leadership chapter will not be all work and no fun! Here’s a sneak peek of how they are preparing for the coming years! Please click and watch the video below.

uaf_viri_vinita from Urgent Action Fund A&P on Vimeo.