The Netherlands: Astrid Aafjes, founder of Women Win

What is your background ? sports or human rights?
I have worked in development all my life, always with a focus on the position of women and girls. At first my interest stemmed from a rights-based perspective; I studied law and I attempted to see how law dealt with women?s rights and how their position could be improved formally as well as informally. I worked on these issues in different countries: in the States for the UNCR and for Women Law and Development International; in China; and in Cambodia for a local human rights organisation that focused on violence on women. It was after the terrible period following Pol Pot and there was a lot of trauma. We looked at how to provide women with legal redress to challenge the situation. For the last 5 years I have been working here in the Netherlands as programme director for Mama Cash, the first international women?s fund.

How did you come up with the idea of Women Win?
As programme director I was asked to go to Casablanca in Morocco to run the Course feminine, set up in 1998 by Nawal El Moutawakel, who is the first Muslim woman ever to win a gold medal in the Olympic games in Los Angeles in 1984. Winning gave her so much energy and empowered her – when she realised how powerful sport was and how it had changed her life, she decided she wanted to give something back to her country and specifically something to the women of her country. That?s why she organised this race and when I was there for the first time in 2006 I saw more than 22 thousand women and girls take off for Casablanca; anyone who has been to Muslim countries can imagine what a powerful sight it is to see so many women taking public space. In a country where it is hard for them to participate in public life it was very exciting to see all these women dancing and laughing and cheering and basically taking over the city.

It was here that I realised that even though we may look at different strategies and programmes to empower women, if we really want to make a difference in the world we actually have to start with the individual – women and girls themselves. We have to help them to build their confidence and self esteem because it is only when they begin to think about themselves differently and that they understand that they have this power that they can begin to decide differently for themselves. So you can provide people with all these nice infrastructures and programmes, but if they do not have the inner power to change themselves, it will not help. It was when I realised this that I thought that a lot more money should be put into this. There are already some very good projects there where sports is used as a strategy – often their problem is accessing financial resources and their organisational capacity. So I thought that really we should create an organisation that feeds into all that, that supports their programs and that helps to build more sustainable and efficient organisations, and also to create a network, or a movement of people who work with sport as a strategy for gender equity.

How have you funded your project?
I launched Women Win at the beginning of 2007 and since then I have raised 1.7 million. It started with a very generous seed grant from Nike: they enabled me to set up an organisation and to develop a programme and to give my first grants and to set a website and to really become a serious entity. But they didn?t just give me money, they enabled me to latch onto their staff and skills – if I had questions about finance they hooked me up with someone from their finance department, the same for human resources and marketing. Also they were able to really help me build my network because they have been active in this field for a number of years and support a number of organisations already. Also, I was able to leverage their grant in the sense that I was able to got to other organisations and companies and say ? ?hey this is what we do and Nike has given us this much, don?t you want to match this??. This was really how I was able to raise so much in such a short time. We also get funds from private and public foundations and from public funds ? for example I am now working on 2 big proposals, one for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one from the Ministry of Sports here in the Netherlands. We have received funding from Germany, the U.S and we have a strategic partnership with Hivos, a big Dutch public foundation that is also very progressive?

Why do you think Nike was interested in your project, what makes it unique?
Well, Women Win is the only organisation world wide that supports organisations dedicated to sports for gender equity, so in that we are unique . This is interesting to them as they invest in innovation, and our mission also matches with their Csr strategy, I am not blind to the fact that it also plays into their marketing strategy, but look – if they are able to help change the world at the same time as care for their interests, then that?s great! I think that it is really important to incorporate corporations into development and social goals as we are not able to change things just through civil society, I really believe in cross-sectoral partnerships, and Nike is one of the corporations that is really committed to making this change. What we have is a truly mutually beneficial partnership.

Why do you say that civil society is not able to make it on its own?
If I look at my own set up, and the way I was able to pull it off as I did, I see that it was also because I had a corporation that gave me the tools, that challenged my thinking about how to reach out to out other organisations, how to be more innovative and how to become more sustainable. Our partnership made me work more creatively and to not become dependent on one donor or one idea. And if I look at the non profit world I think what I always missed was people coming from a more business background, people asking to see results and efficiency. Of course businesses have to work like that in order to make profits, so I think as an NGO we have to be the same but our profits are the social changes we generate, we have to be able to justify the investments that have been made and to justify the work that we do. In that sense I think it is crucial that business and civil society work together, it will also increase outreach and impact.

Does the same go for government partnerships too?
Yes, I think so. For many of the things we do it is important for us to have the support of the ministries or the local government, and the same goes for many of the groups that we support – if they don?t have support from the city government or from the region, it is impossible for them to implement their programme. On the other hand, when they are supportive, this is great as they help with communication and outreach.

Do any men work at Women Win?
Actually, no! But this is not intentional at all, and we actually have decided together with our board members to look into incorporate men into our team (which is made up of 2 full time staff and 2 freelance contract workers, plus the board) because I think that, and this applies to our programmes too, it is important to involve boys and men. Particularly, if you look at gender based violence or Hiv and Aids, there is situation of imbalanced power, so if you don?t change their attitudes you will not change the situation.

What do you look for when you select projects?
We look for different things, but one important aspect is that the projects not promote sport for sports sake. We take it as a given that sport is a right and that women have the right to sport, that girls can have access to and participate in sports. So while we believe in defending sport as a right we also believe that sport is a strategy for achieving development goals. So, for example, sport is a means of decreasing gender based violence or supporting post conflict resolutions, or decreasing the spread of Hiv Aids, or increasing the participation of girls in schools – we always look at what the added value of the sports programme is, and if it isn?t there then we wont support the programme.

How many projects has Women Win supported so far?
Five organisations and two fellowship programmes. Our fellowship programmes support young innovative potential leaders, individuals who contribute towards sports and gender equity. These could be people who do research in a very innovative, sustainable way, or writers or journalists who write about women playing sports and the impact this has on women.

How do you find the projects, or do the projects find you?
A bit of both. Actually, we are looking to partner with Ashoka?s changemakers programme ? we are looking to use their format to create an open source format so that people can nominate themselves and nominate other people and then react to peoples nominations. I really like this model and if it works then we may look into doing something similar for our grants programme. However we are really looking, through the grant programme, at how to create role model organisations, that is to say organisations that are really effective and sustainable. We are really looking to establish long term partnerships with certain, key organisations rather than adopt the strategy of ?letting a thousand flowers bloom?. For example, one of our board members is also the president of an organisation in Rwanda called Akwos – they started setting up a football team for girls in Rwanda at a time when girls were not allowed to even watch the games, let alone play them. But now football has become totally accepted and there are programmes all over the country. This is a really good example of starting something, setting an example for others to follow. When it works, other organisations will pick up on it and carry on. This is what we want to do: create examples of good practices, be a place where organisations can learn and connect to each other, and from there we hope that we will be able to contribute to new initiatives that we can support in the future. The first three to four years we want to focus on supporting 40 organisations that can really bring this change.

Given your experience in human rights and sports, do you think the Chinese Olympic games should be boycotted?
No. If you look at countries that violate human rights that have been boycotted the population is often worse off: look at Cuba or Iraq. People often end up suffering much more from boycotts. As for the Olympic games – look at Tibet and the media coverage that Tibetan monks have received without China being able to do anything about it? I think these games are very political and I think that for a lot of people in China these games are an opportunity to show the world what is going on, I do not believe in isolation and I don?t think that a boycott of the games is going to help. China is so in the news these days, and the journalists who will go there anyway for the Olympics will not only talk about the sports but other things too.

What websites can you suggest to our readers interested in finding out more?

• www.sportanddev.org
• www.ncdo.nl
• www.wfnet.org
• www.wkamsterdam.nl
• www.homelessworldcup.org