About the Equal Roots Fund
Supporting women, young people, and people with disabilities to access equal opportunities within their family, work, and community.
The Equal Roots Fund helps communities in rural Africa address inequality, strengthen women’s leadership, and ensure everyone can participate fully in building sustainable livelihoods
Investing in this fund is a five-year commitment to 2030, helping Ripple Effect strengthen what works, test new approaches, and share inclusive solutions more widely.
Inequality and exclusion in rural Africa
Across rural East Africa, inequality affects who can earn an income, access food, and shape their own future. Women often face the greatest barriers to land, income, safety, and decision-making. These challenges are also faced by young people, people with disabilities, families affected by HIV and AIDS, refugees, and other excluded communities.
These overlapping inequalities drive poverty, food insecurity, and violence, weakening the resilience of whole communities.
The Equal Roots Fund strengthens inclusion across all our work. It ensures more people can access opportunities, influence decisions, and build secure livelihoods.
We work with families and communities to share power more fairly, challenge harmful norms, and create safe, supportive environments. We also invest in practical solutions, including accessible training, local childcare, youth skills and enterprise pathways, community safeguarding, and inclusive services shaped by the people who use them.
What this fund supports
The Equal Roots Fund works to ensure women, girls, young people, and people with disabilities can access opportunities and influence decisions in their families and communities. It supports communities to:
- Advance women’s agency – using our Transformative Household Methodology to increase women’s influence over farming, income, assets, and care while engaging the entire family to support lasting change
- Prevent violence and strengthen safeguarding – building community safeguarding and awareness of rights
- Ensure inclusion for those facing the greatest barriers – removing practical and social barriers so everyone can fully participate in programs and community life
- Support inclusive livelihoods – expanding access to income-generating opportunities through farming, enterprise, and savings groups
- Embed and share inclusive practice – strengthening, testing, and sharing approaches to influence inclusive practice across our programmes and beyond
The fund also allows us to continue scaling proven approaches while testing new ideas to create safe, supportive, and inclusive communities.
Expected outcomes
By the end of 2030, the Equal Roots Fund will help ensure that participants are:
- Actively participating – with 65%+ being women and 15% living with disabilities
- Free from stigma – families affected by HIV and AIDS can access services and participate in community life without discrimination
- Sharing power – more women report decision-making over farming, income, and household resources, with fairer sharing of workloads
- Living in safer communities – reduced violence and discrimination, with more equitable family and community relationships
- Accessing childcare – hundreds of children benefit from safe, local childcare, enabling parents (especially women) to farm, train, or run businesses
- Influencing wider practice – Ripple Effect’s gender and social inclusion approaches are strengthened, tested, and adopted by partner organisations and policy networks
Support this fund
Your contribution to the Equal Roots Fund will help women, girls, young people, and people with disabilities overcome barriers, build confidence, and create lasting change that strengthens entire communities.
The Equal Roots Fund is one of three – you may also be interested in learning more about our Farming for the Future Fund (climate-resilient agriculture) and our Seed & Scale Fund (enterprise development and financial inclusion).
Interested in joining our Equal Roots giving circle? Supporters giving £5,000 or more to the fund become a member and receive exclusive benefits. To find out more, contact the Partnerships team at partnerships@rippleeffect.org or fill the form below.
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