Advocating for Reproductive Rights: How to Engage with New Global Funding Initiatives

The September 9 announcement lands in a week that put SRHR access under pressure in three very different settings — a Wisconsin courtroom, a Kenyan advocacy campaign, and community summits in the U.S. South.

The open call and what's still unclear

The fundsforNGOs listing — "Shaping the Future of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights" — signals an invitation for civil society input into how SRHR programs and policies are designed. Public reporting on the call currently carries only a headline; the full request, including submission criteria, eligibility, geographic focus, and funding scope, has not surfaced in the materials available so far. Prospective applicants should treat the brief as a reason to follow the funding portal directly for detailed terms and deadlines rather than rely on secondary summaries of it.

The landscape the call sits inside

The funder's timing lines up with concrete fights over who can deliver care and under what conditions:

• In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and a group of healthcare clinicians have filed suit against state restrictions that limit abortion care to physicians only and impose a mandatory 24-hour waiting period. Their argument is constitutional: the state constitution itself protects reproductive decision-making, which they say makes those restrictions an overreach regardless of where the political majority sits.
• In Kenya, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is using its "Sexual Health Is Health" platform to press for expanded access to testing, treatment, and prevention — a framing that treats sexual health services as core healthcare rather than a discretionary add-on.
• In Augusta and Aiken, reproductive and maternal health summits convened providers, advocates, and patients around practical questions of access to care, putting community-level delivery back on the local agenda.

What patients and providers should track

For the audience this publication serves, three threads are worth watching closely:

• The Wisconsin case. A ruling that reaches the question of provider scope would change how many clinicians a patient can actually see — the operational detail that often matters more than the headline statute.
• The Kenya campaign. Whether "Sexual Health Is Health" translates into concrete changes at the county or national level will tell advocates whether donor open calls like this one are likely to fund regional priorities or bypass them.
• The summits in Augusta and Aiken. Local convenings tend to produce follow-up commitments on contraception access, postpartum care, or maternal mortality — the areas where progress is most measurable on a short timeline.

The open call is one entry point into that landscape. Its real impact will depend on who shows up to submit, and on whether the parallel policy fights produce a friendlier — or harder — environment for SRHR delivery on the ground.