A/HRC/32/3 E/CN.6/2016/8 16. The strategic plan reaffirms the Trust Fund’s determination to reverse the chronic underinvestment that continues to hamper work to prevent and end violence against women and girls. 3 Specifically, the Trust Fund aims to play a catalytic role in advocating for enhanced global giving and liaise with new potential partners, particularly in the private and business sectors. In 2015, the Trust Fund formed a new partnership with the Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation to support technology-based programmes to end violence. The Trust Fund continued its successful partnership with Soko, an ethical fashion brand, and with Yuwei Designs, a jewellery company, and forged greater links with the fashion and entertainment sectors through partnerships with FASH UNITED, a California-based non-governmental organization; We-Are (The Collective), an organization in London; the LDNY Foundation; and the Women: Inspiration and Enterprise Network. In April, the Trust Fund was honoured at the Women: Inspiration and Enterprise Network Awards in the United Kingdom, which celebrate the success of inspirational women. The Trust Fund’s partnership with Music for Life International culminated in a fundraising concert, held at Carnegie Hall, in New York, in October. Grant giving in 2015 17. In 2015, the Trust Fund received 1,715 applications, from 119 countries and territories. The total funding requested was more than $662 million. The Trust Fund awarded $12.86 million, in 33 grants, covering 29 countries and territories. Thirty civil society organizations and three governments received grants for projects that are expected to reach 1.2 million beneficiaries by 2018. 18. In terms of grant value, 22 per cent of the funds allocated went to programmes in Asia and the Pacific; 28 per cent to programmes in Africa; 20 per cent to programmes in Europe and Central Asia; 12 per cent to programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean; 10 per cent to programmes in the Arab States and North Africa; and 8 per cent to cross-regional programmes. Grants amounting to some 8 per cent of the total ($1,085,832) were awarded in the form of small grants (less than $100,000), predominantly to smaller women’s organizations, as part of the Trust Fund’s new strategy to increase funding to smaller grass-roots organizations. 19. Projects in Africa awarded grants in 2015 will address a range of issues, from breaking the social consensus of silence around sexual harassment in secondary schools (Cameroon), to using transformative participation processes to engage young men in decreasing violence against women (Kenya). Other Trust Fund projects will address harmful practices through community-driven projects (United Republic of Tanzania) and efforts to translate state commitments, laws and policies into action to prevent the perpetration of and protect women from violence and other harmful practices, with a focus on female genital mutilation/cutting and early marriage (Kenya). A regional initiative will continue and upscale a previous Trust Fund-supported project to enhance multisectoral strategies to respond effectively to violence in conflict-related settings (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya). This new phase of the project, for which the grantee was invited to apply, focuses on strengthening the capacity of local partners to assume full ownership of training __________________ 3 15-22220 Angelika Arutyunova and Cindy Clark, Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots: The Status of Financing for Women’s Rights Organizing and Gender Equality (Toronto, Canada, Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), 2013). 5/17