Islamabad : DASTAK Women Rights and Awareness Foundation has won the 2025 Nelson Mandela-Graça Machel Innovation Award in the Organisation Category, presented by the CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, in whose words:
“These innovators live up to the vision of Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel – a belief in people power and justice grounded in dignity and imagination. Their work inspires new paths forward for civil society and the world. DASTAK Foundation’s (Pakistan) FIERCE (Feminist Initiative for Environmental Resilience, Collective Care, and Well-being of Eco-Justice Defenders) initiative is reimagining climate and gender justice through a gender responsive, intersectional and participatory research model that centers emotion, care, and lived experience.”
Emerging from the aftermath of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, Dastak Foundation’s model rejects extractive narratives and instead foregrounds the knowledge, pain, and dreams of grassroots defenders in Pakistan and the Global South.
In the words of Hira Amjad, Founder and Executive Director of DASTAK Foundation:
“Nelson Mandela Graca Machel award recognises the power of care, community and grassroots knowledge rooted within DASTAK Foundation’s work and FIERCE. The award affirms that decolonised, gender responsive climate action is not only necessary, it is effective and urgent. This moment is not just ours, it belongs to every individual, every climate defender, every survivor who is building liberation with care and love”.
DASTAK Foundation joins a powerful cohort of global awardees whose bold, community-rooted innovations are reimagining what climate justice looks like.
Now in its 20th year, the Nelson Mandela-Graça Machel Innovation Awards, by CIVICUS World Alliance, uplift global change-makers, who are using creative and committed approaches to achieving justice and human rights, often in environments where resources and support are scarce. The awards seek to celebrate their achievements to increase their visibility and recognition on a global scale.
Sohail Majeed is a Special Correspondent at The Diplomatic Insight. He has twelve plus years of experience in journalism & reporting. He covers International Affairs, Diplomacy, UN, Sports, Climate Change, Economy, Technology, and Health.
