Birth Justice Initiative: Understanding the MMAP within Global Fund for Women’s Feminist Funding Practice

Report Gender Health Campaigns Partnerships Strategies

29 January 2026

by Comotion Team

5 minutes of reading

Learn about the Global Fund for Women’s Movement Mapping and Assessment Process (MMAP) — a tool embedded within its feminist funding methodology — and how the Birth Justice Initiative used it to map relationships, identify gaps, and understand resource flows across birth justice ecosystems in Kenya and Nigeria. 

The Birth Justice Initiative (BJI) is a multi-year initiative designed to support and fund grassroots feminist movements working at the intersection of gender justice and maternal and newborn health. The Initiative focuses on resourcing organisations and leaders across Nigeria and Kenya, who are embedded in their communities and already leading and responding to the needs of women and families and the realities of pregnancy, birth, and care in these countries.

The BJI approach to funding is grounded in Global Fund for Women’s feminist funding methodology, which prioritises flexible, unrestricted, and often multi-year funding for grassroots organisations led by those most impacted by inequality. Alongside grantmaking, this approach places emphasis on learning, movement knowledge, and participatory processes that help inform funding decisions over time.

Understanding the Movement Mapping and Assessment Process (MMAP)

The Movement Mapping and Assessment Process (MMAP) is one tool within Global Fund for Women’s feminist funding methodology. The purpose of MMAP is to build a shared, movement-informed picture of who is doing what, where, and how — and to surface connections, blind spots, and areas that may be under-resourced or overlooked.

Having recently conducted MMAP in both Kenya and Nigeria, and experiencing the process upclose for the first time (at Comotion), we created this report to document our learning and provide a concrete example of how participatory methods can be used to inform and shape funding practices. With decades of experience working with and alongside health funders, MMAP felt unique enough as a practice that we are sharing this report as a learning resource for other donors looking for evolve their approach in this new era of health funding.

The MMAP in Kenya and Nigeria

Between August and October 2025, Global Fund for Women, working with in-country sexual, reproductive, maternal, and newborn health (SRMNH) experts and advisors, carried out an MMAP across Kenya and Nigeria. This followed an earlier phase of country and movement mapping [report here], which informed the selection of both countries as the Initiative’s initial focus.

The MMAP combined in-depth interviews, national-level surveys, visual mapping and analysis of movement relationships, gaps and resource flows and facilitated validation sessions. In total, 321 movement actors participated — 181 in Nigeria and 140 in Kenya. Participants included grassroots collectives, community-based organisations, clinicians, youth-led networks, disability-justice groups, sex-worker-led collectives, and national civil society organisations.

Rather than treating participants solely as sources of information, the process included validation sessions designed to test and refine findings with those involved, ensuring that the emerging analysis reflected on-the-ground realities. A snowball approach was used to extend participation beyond well-known organisations, helping bring less visible actors and issue areas into the mapping.

As one participant noted:

“Funders’ interests should be based on the needs — because the needs are diverse.” (Nigeria)

What the MMAP surfaced

Across both countries, the MMAP highlighted the breadth of work already taking place under the banner of birth justice — much of it led by groups that sit outside formal maternal and newborn health policy spaces.

In Kenya, youth-led networks and community health volunteers play a central role in providing accompaniment, translation, harm-reduction information, and emotional support for young mothers and pregnant people. In Nigeria, sex-worker-led collectives and disability-justice organisers have developed parallel systems of peer support and care that are critical to people’s safety and dignity during pregnancy and childbirth, but are rarely reflected in policy frameworks.

One participant described the layered challenges clearly:

“Women in rural areas are navigating roads that don’t exist and clinics that have no supplies… then there’s the stigma if you’re disabled or a sex worker.” (Kenya)

How the findings will be used

The Movement Maps produced through the MMAP are intended as practical learning tools. They support a clearer understanding of relationships, gaps, and resource flows across birth justice ecosystems and can inform collaboration, advocacy, and funding decisions.

Within the Birth Justice Initiative, the MMAP findings will inform the establishment of Movement Advisory Groups (MAGs) in Kenya and Nigeria and support funding decisions that seek to reach grassroots, youth-led, rural, and disability-led groups that are often under-resourced.

This report offers a focused look at one participatory tool within a wider funding methodology. It illustrates how movement-led knowledge and structured learning processes can inform funding practice without displacing the leadership of those closest to the work.