Last year, Mama Cash launched our first ten-year strategic framework, ‘In Movement Together: Funding Feminist Activism Globally’ (2021-2030). At its heart, this framework makes a commitment to the movements Mama Cash supports to share power. One of the ways that we are sharing power is by transitioning to a system of participatory grantmaking led by activists (read more about this shift here and here).
This year marks zohra moosa’s tenth year as a member of Mama Cash’s Management Team, from 2013 as our Director of Programmes, and since 2017 as our Executive Director. zohra has decided, together with Mama Cash’s Management Team and Supervisory Board, that this is the right moment for her to step out of Mama Cash and make way for new leadership as part of her own personal commitment to sharing power. zohra plans to transition out of the organisation by the end of 2022.
Moments of transition are moments of opportunity. As we prepare to welcome new leadership, Mama Cash believes that this is also a moment to take a new approach to leadership. The Management Team and the Supervisory Board of Mama Cash have, therefore, decided to evolve our leadership structure to embrace a model of co-executive leadership going forward: one co-Executive Director (co-ED) will be from and based in the Global South, while the other will be based in the Netherlands, our first home.
This model will enable us to live our value of sharing power in concrete and specific ways. It breaks with the tradition of the single leader and the idea that one person can and should make the final decisions and hold final responsibility for an organisation. This new model also builds on our internationalist principles and our commitment to embracing more just practices and ways of working. Having a co-ED from the Global South will demonstrate that we really are a global organisation, with well-integrated colleagues worldwide, including at the most senior levels of leadership, and that we are an organisation that genuinely seeks to be led by the most revolutionary feminists, wherever they are, including especially those who challenge us to unlearn and learn afresh from new, previously marginalised, perspectives.
For nearly forty years, Mama Cash has remained in motion, always open to bold experimentation, always seeking to match the courage and creativity of the activists with whom we are in movement. As we approach our fortieth anniversary in 2023, we see this transition to a new leadership model as a gift to ourselves and to the movements with which we share power.