By Graziella Terracciano | Partnerships Manager
Stand With Us Fund (SWU) addresses male violence against women and girls (VAWG) by investing in frontline organisations. Originally started with money raised by Reclaim the Streets following the appalling murder of Sarah Everard by a service police officer, Stand With Us exists to make the UK a safer place for all women and girls through: organisational development grants of up to £25k and free-to-access training and networking opportunities.
SWU is the only fund offering organisational development grants to the network of small, frontline, women-led VAWG organisations working across the UK. SWU supports the UK Government’s ambition to halve VAWG in the next decade.
Thanks to your support, Stand With Us has distributed £1.1 million through 48 grants, reaching 25k+ women and girls and strengthening the network of critical frontline VAWG organisations, UK-wide.
STAND WITH US 2
Stand With Us 2, which distributed over £500k in grants to 23 organisations in 2025, is now complete and undergoing an external evaluation, to help us gather evidence of impact and to understand where improvements to the fund can be made. We look forward to sharing the impact report that will be published later this year.
STAND WITH US 3
We were pleased to open our third round of Stand With Us from 12 May to 22 June 2026.
With the round now closed, we have begun the assessment process, which includes preliminary eligibility checks and shortlisting by our team, full assessments by our freelance assessors, and the final selection of organisations by a grants panel comprised of sector leaders and experts and at least two Rosa Trustees.
We aim to distribute a minimum of £500k to women-led VAWG organisations working across the UK to support women and girls impacted by male violence. Stand With Us 3 grantholding organisations will be announced in November 2026, with projects starting in January 27.
CASE STUDY
Adapted from a presentation by Miriam Ahmed, CEO of SWU2 grantholder organisation Amina - The Muslim Women’s Resource Centre (MWRC) Note: Amira is not her real name.
Amira came to the UK on a spousal visa. Eight years after her visa expired, her husband was still promising to renew it - a promise he never kept. Without valid immigration status, she had no safe way to leave.
From 6am until 11pm, Amira's day belonged to everyone but herself. Tea and breakfast had to be made before each family member woke. Lunch had to be timed to her husband's return. Her sister-in-law arrived for dinner each evening with her children, meaning Amira routinely cooked for nine people. Her only break was a short daily walk, permitted because of her high blood pressure. At 11pm, she massaged her mother-in-law's feet. Seventeen hours of labour, every day.
This was coercive control, systematically imposed and collectively enforced by an entire household. Every member of the family was complicit in Amira's abuse.
Amira's experience is not unique. Many women are abused by multiple perpetrators, yet our legal definitions, our services and our training are not designed to recognise this. When one woman went to the police they said: "We can charge your husband, but everything to do with your in-laws is muddy water."
For women like Amira, Amina - the Muslim Women's Resource Centre - is there to help, providing: one-to-one confidential support from a specialist advocacy caseworker to help women navigate their next steps; immigration and legal advice to understand their rights and options; access to a helpline and befriending services to connect with other women who share their experience; and employability and financial support to help them build a new life, and more...
If we are truly committed to ending violence against women and girls, we must understand who the perpetrators are, and ensure our response reflects women's actual lives. This means raising awareness with services such as the police, legal professionals and the courts, immigration and social services (where children are involved), making sure abuse like that experienced by Amira can be recognised and addressed.
With Rosa’s support, Amina – the Muslim Women’s Resource Centre was able to start building the evidence needed to shine a light extended family abuse, and produced the report Sabr, Silence and Struggles: Extended family abuse in Muslim and BME Communities in Scotland, that aims to change how services understand and respond to this critical .
Watch Miriam Ahmed’s full talk about the work of Amina MWRC at Rosa’s annual conference 2026 here.
Thank you for supporting Rosa's Stand With Us Fund. None of this would have been possible without you.
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