Forward Together

Forward Together is one of the largest women of color-led organizations in the country. Its core work has always been to advance reproductive justice, recognizing that racism, sexism, and homophobia impact one’s ability to exercise bodily autonomy.

Forward Together’s work includes cultural organizing, civic engagement, and movement- and coalition-building with organizations across the country. This work is in service of activating its base in key states and nationally on its primary issues: expanding healthcare access and abortion care to those who are most often denied it, prioritizing behavioral healthcare and economic opportunity over incarceration, and ensuring that policy and culture recognize all families, whether related by blood or affinity.

Our “transformative leadership” strategy has been greatly informed by the way that Forward Together approaches its work. Movement work can bring exhaustion, burnout, and trauma, which harms those who are doing the work and, eventually, stands in the way of progress. Throughout its programs—whether focused on influencing policy in its target states or on centering the voices of Black women and nonbinary people in the national conversation on abortion—Forward Together integrates embodied practice, making wellness and healing part of its organizational culture.

Starting in 2016, Forward Together’s Stepping Into Power program brought this approach to other leaders in the movement, gathering an initial cohort of leaders of color from allied organizations to learn these practices, take them back home to their work, and strengthen the movement as a whole. You can hear from Stepping into Power alumni about their powerful experiences in the video below.

Recent grant history