Established in 2009 and based in Nairobi, UHAI EASHRI is Africa’s first indigenous activist fund for sexual and gender minorities and sex workers. Its model starts from a foundational commitment: those most affected by injustice should lead the response to it. Since its founding, UHAI has disbursed more than $15 million across more than 1,300 grants, supporting over 200 organisations across seven East African countries.
What distinguishes UHAI is not just that it funds community-led work, but that it is community-led itself at every level. Staff, board, and committees are drawn directly from LGBTIQ+ and sex worker movements. Strategic priorities are co-developed through activist engagement. Calls for proposals are co-written with community members, and the language, structure, and scope of funding processes reflect the realities of those applying.
Grantmaking is governed by a Peer Grants Committee (PGC): 13 activists nominated from the seven countries UHAI operates in, selected to represent the demographic diversity of the communities it resources. The PGC runs an open, competitive, peer-reviewed process annually. More than half of all UHAI grants are awarded through this mechanism.
UHAI also hosts a biennial conference, co-designed by community members, which surfaces emerging priorities and feeds directly into strategic planning cycles. This ensures the fund’s direction is not set in advance by donors, but emerges from the lived experience of the movements it supports.
UHAI takes risks that conventional donors typically avoid, including funding in contexts of active government persecution, and investing in organisations outside formal legal structures. Its approach consistently reaches groups and geographies that standard philanthropy does not.
What practitioners can take from this
UHAI EASHRI demonstrates that activist-led philanthropy can operate at significant scale with rigour and accountability. Placing those with the most at stake in control of strategy, design, and decisions is not a governance risk; it is the mechanism through which the fund achieves both reach and legitimacy.