Women who are experts in their fields are rarely called upon by the media but that is about to change thanks to one organisation working to share their voices.
South Africa (06 November 2020) – Quote This Woman+ (QW+), an organisation which works to amplify the voices of women in the media, has raised nearly R30 000 in less than a week.
Kathy Magrobi, founder and director of the non-profit, said that the donations had helped the organisation reach almost 60% of its fundraising target in the first seven days of the campaign.
The campaign – which launched on October 29 – aims to raise R55 000 in 30 days. By midday on November 5, the kitty stood at a whopping R 29 744.91, proving just how much South Africans are keen to rally behind this cause.
The organisation’s key focus this year has been building its database of women+ experts, as a resource for media organisations to diversify whose voices get quoted in the news. QW+ volunteers have grown the database exponentially since the onset of Covid-19, and it now hosts over 370 women+ experts, including leading public health figures and specialists in fields from agriculture to zoology. The + in the name means that the database encompasses all marginalised voices.
Magrobi said that the money donated so far translated to a year of hosting for the QW+ database, adding ten new women+ experts, answering five media queries and fuelling volunteers with coffee and data for a week.
“Every donation, large and small, makes a difference. Every donation is a stitch in our safety net for 2021, a year that will need women’s voices more urgently than at any time in our history,” she said.
The organisation was founded in 2019, aiming to redress the imbalance of voices in the South African media. Less than 20% of sources quoted in the news are women, Magrobi says.
The fundraising campaign ends on November 27. The next event will be the organisation’s first-ever storytelling evening.
If you would like to donate to their cause, you can do so via the donation link: quotethiswoman.org.za/donate
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