White Ribbon Alliance sunsets US operation to shift power locally

At the end of this year, White Ribbon Alliance — an international coalition focused on maternal, reproductive, and women’s health — will be saying goodbye to its U.S. team. But unlike many organizations, the secretariat isn’t cutting its staff due to failing finances. It’s doing so to trigger a shift in power, and to make room for the groups closest to the women White Ribbon focuses on. “Decisions won't come from the top. They will come from us, as a bottom-up approach,” said Dr. Amanullah Khan, who heads up White Ribbon’s national chapter in Pakistan. “It’s just beyond imagination — that’s what the national alliances are feeling.” For Kristy Kade, White Ribbon’s CEO, that decision comes with real consequences. By 2025, Kade and seven other Washington, D.C.-based staff will be losing their jobs — and instead of being led by a U.S.-based coordinating body, White Ribbon’s partner organizations and national alliances will decide for themselves how they’d like to lead. A similar situation will play out for the secretariat of Women’s March Global, which joined forces with White Ribbon in 2021. “It’s hard, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do next,” Kade told Devex. “But the only change you can really, truly make is the change you make for yourself.” Kade’s feelings — and the U.S. team’s sunsetting — are not happening in a vacuum. In the aid sector, conversations about decolonization, localization, and shifting power have increasingly begun to take center stage. The U.S. Agency for International Development announced they’d be steering a quarter of all eligible funding toward local organizations by 2025. And some United Nations agencies and international organizations have moved their headquarters to the global south, in an attempt to shift their core functions closer to the people they serve. Still, very few organizations have taken the plunge like White Ribbon and embraced the long-standing development cliche of working yourself out of a job. “There is a resounding call for shifts in power and to make way for new leaders, new perspectives, new voices, and new ways of organizing,” the organization explained in a recent press release. “National Alliances, as autonomous organizations, will determine for themselves how they want to collaborate and work together.” Kade said it was this desire to shift power that had driven the decision. “We’ve always abided by the philanthropic principle of ask, listen, and act in our programming,” she said. “And that’s what we’re aiming to do here. We asked, we listened, and we acted accordingly.” And according to Khan, that change will bring a seismic shift to the way organizations like his local alliance in Pakistan operate. Local organizations will gain a new level of recognition and importance, he said, along with the opportunity to play a leadership role at the global level. They will also be able to work directly with donors — cutting out an intermediary that might not know which programs, grants, or opportunities work best within their communities. In their latest report, a dozen of the organization’s U.S. staff members crouched down, axes in hand, at a recent team retreat — the ax-throwing venue a clear nod to the agency’s closure. The photo caption read, “Get ready to ‘axe,’ listen, and act!” And despite the imminent, enormous change, every one of those team members was smiling. “It’s commendable, what they have decided to do,” said Tala Alngag Bautista, a Filipino community organizer who serves on the advisory board of Stopping As Success, which is trying to help more organizations make way for local leadership. “It’s a decision that takes a lot of courage, and a lot of humility.” The U.S. team won’t be disappearing just yet. For the rest of the year, the organization will be supporting their grassroots partners through the transition, and ensuring the continuation of their campaigns through other organizers, sponsors, and partner agencies. All eight members of the team, Kade said, have chosen to stay on to see that process through — something she feels is a testament to how much the team believes in not just the shift, but the importance of equipping partners successfully. “When I think about decolonization as a movement, speaking from the bottom, being collaborative, and paying it forward are so important,” said Leanne Levers, another staff member — White Ribbon’s director of advocacy and communications — who will also be losing her job come December. “The process of us sunsetting is within that vein: bringing the organizations who often, are in the margins but doing amazing work, to the center.” The team will also be preserving the tools, resources, and materials to help others engage with grassroots organizations and communities, especially as it relates to collecting women’s voices and analyzing their feedback. As part of that work, White Ribbon has published a directory of more than 1,000 community-based organizations to spur connection and partnership. And, they’ve created an artificial intelligence-infused data exchange, which was designed and trained using more than 4 million survey responses from women and young people across the world. In the future, they hope the data will be picked up by national alliances, partner organizations, and others across the world, serving as a free, public tool for all who want to access it. “Even as we exit, there are so many incredible players that will be able to do this work,” said Sandra Pepera, the board chair of White Ribbon Alliance. “But we really do think the intermediary role [of international organizations] can and should decrease. And that’s why we’re stepping out.”