The inroads team is inspired and glad to share with you results from all the inroads Partnership Fund (iPF) grants during the time period 2014-18. The network membership and interactions have grown so much in this time period and so has the work done through iPF projects. At the same time, looking at the outcomes of all of this work helps us to reflect, learn and activate ourselves more and more to make deeper inroads every time.

An overview:

In 2014, inroads established the iPF to be a flexible funding tool that furthers collective learning and action to understand and reduce abortion stigma. This collective learning and action is generated by funding and supporting local organizations in the design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to understand and shift how abortion stigma affects people socially, physically, and emotionally. The fund prioritizes support for inroads members who do not ordinarily have access to mainstream sources of funding and who are deliberately centering the understanding and dismantling of stigma in their work. The iPF currently operates with two levels of funding: Partnership grants and Seed grants.

You can download and read the entire “iPF Results” document from here:

Here is a brief summary:

• 51 projects completed to date
  • 38 Seed grants
  • 13 Partnership grants
• 44 members supported
• Projects in 28 countries across 5 continents
• $428,728 in grants provided between 2014-2018

Over the past four years, a diverse group of inroads Partnership Fund grantees have undertaken efforts varied in project style, focus, and method. Taken as a body of work, five themes or practice areas have emerged from the Fund:

• Grantees from Vietnam, Nepal, Botswana and Ethiopia made inroads by conducting formative research about stigma and its effects and engaged midwives, healthcare workers, nursing and medical students, practicing OB/GYN’s in the process of this research.
• In Zambia, Nepal, US, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Tanzania, Guatemala and Vietnam grantees piloted and implemented interventions, many using creative tools and methods.
• In Mexico, Nigeria, Poland and Brazil, grantees contributed to emerging evidence base about what works to reduce stigma and provided many learnings including the effectiveness of story-circles as well as helplines and the importance of breaking the silence around abortion.
• Grantees from Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Cameroon, Brazil, Thailand, Guatemala, Ireland and Argentina worked on building the movement to end abortion stigma and engaging related movements. And how can we forget the repeal the 8th amendment victory in Ireland, the East African struggle against the state shutting down Marie Stopes abortion clinics, as well as the unflinching green scarves of Argentina. You will find more detail about movement building work carried out by iPF grantees in the document.
• In Cameroon, Kenya, Ireland, Bangladesh, India, Nigeria and US, grantees used innovative and creative methods to explore, center, and mitigate stigma. They produced podcasts, apps, online workbooks, Virtual Reality experiences, animated films, and performances to bust stigma.

Reflections from inroads:

This funding leads to private and public examples that can be used by other members to translate, adapt, repeat and evaluate, making the work of stigma busting itself more visible in the reproductive justice and sexual and reproductive health and rights community. Notably, inroads members who receive one grant go on to do more work, get other funds (whether from inroads or from other funders such as Amplify Change or the Safe Abortion Action Fund) and incorporate stigma-busting into their other work.

We have also noticed that inroads members who apply for grants transform their stigma-busting work EVEN if they didn’t get the grant. One member noted at a recent conference that “when we applied for a grant, we were unhappy to have not gotten the award, but it made us think about doing a project focused on stigma. We then applied elsewhere and got support for stigma work.”

We continue to work hard to ensure a stronger network and deeper support to inroads members. We have recently launched the new inroads Partnership Fund and check out the 2018-20 Partnership Fund grantees and 2019 Seed Fund grantees by clicking the links. Let’s keep the energy strong and always sharing, activating, evaluating and busting abortion stigma!