As displacement continues across Lebanon, grassroots organizations are working to meet the needs of communities often overlooked by conventional humanitarian responses. Among them are women-led, feminist groups supporting displaced families, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, refugees, and migrant workers. For Doria Feminist Fund, responding to the 2026 war did not stop at mobilizing resources, but also at ensuring that these organizations have the funding and support they need to reach their communities.

Founded in 2021 by feminist activists from the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, Doria Feminist Fund supports marginalized communities and grassroots organizations across the region. Through its grant programs, the fund provides financial support alongside capacity-building and accompaniment, helping its partners strengthen their work beyond individual projects.

“We support registered and unregistered groups,” explains the fund’s senior grants officer. This is particularly important because countless emerging organizations struggle to secure emergency funding in the first stages of their work.

Preparing for Recurring Crises

Emergency response is an important part of the fund’s work. Doria Feminist Fund initiated its first emergency response program in 2023, following the earthquakes that hit Syria and Turkey. Since then, it has mobilized resources to support initiatives responding to crises in many countries across the region, including Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, and Syria.

The organization has a 2025-2030 strategic vision which includes crisis preparedness as one of its pillars: in a region where conflict and displacement and recurrent realities, the need to anticipate and prepare for emergencies is essential.

When the war on Lebanon escalated again in March 2026, the fund activated its emergency response mechanisms. They received requests for assistance from both existing grantee partners and new groups looking for support for their emergency response plans.

The fund mobilized additional resources by approaching existing donors, requesting permission to redirect previously allocated grants toward emergency response. It also drew on remaining balances from earlier grants and sought further funding to support displaced people and women-led organizations and groups responding to their needs.

The response extended beyond financial assistance: the fund shared psychosocial support guidance with its partners, alongside information on emergency shelters, referral services, and relevant contact numbers. It also continued providing security updates and contextual information to help organizations adapt their activities as the situation evolved.

Rather than replacing its regular grant-making work, the emergency response built on preparedness mechanisms developed over the preceding years. The aim was to make sure resources were available quickly while supporting organizations already working within affected communities.

Why Women-Led Organizations and Groups Matter

For the senior grants officer, women-led organizations and groups are essential to crisis response because of their knowledge of the communities they serve: they have existing relationships, which allow them to identify needs, reach marginalized groups, and respond to circumstances that larger institutions may overlook or struggle to address.

Through the help of its partners, Doria Feminist Fund supports initiatives assisting internally displaced people and connecting them with services and resources. These organizations work with communities whose needs are often overlooked in broader humanitarian responses, such as women and girls, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, refugees, and migrant workers.

The fund’s partners have reported providing different forms of assistance, including cash support for people with disabilities. Such interventions illustrate the importance of responses shaped by the specific circumstances of affected communities, rather than exclusively relying on standardized forms of help.

DFF’s senior grants officer also points to the fund’s previous regional grant-making cycle as an illustration of the gap between available resources and demands: the fund was only able to support around seven percent of approximately five hundred eligible applications received. This figure covers the wider SWANA region rather than Lebanon alone, but it reflects nonetheless the scale of unmet demand among organizations seeking funding.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Haltek

With the support of the Doria emergency grant, HalTek was able to provide direct financial assistance to displaced individuals with disabilities and their families in Lebanon. This support helped cover urgent daily needs such as medication, transportation, communication, rent contributions, and other essential expenses linked to displacement and disability.

The grant made it possible for HalTek to address displacement from a humanitarian perspective while respecting the needs and priorities of each individual and family. Rather than applying a standard response, HalTek used a flexible model that allowed people to use the support in the way that best responded to their situation. For some, this meant relocating to a safer place or covering part of their rent; for others, it meant maintaining access to medication, nutritional supplements, or other essential items that are often overlooked in crisis settings. As implementation progressed, HalTek reached around 48 cases through calls, follow-up, and transfers. In several situations, one case represented more than one person with a disability or serious challenge within the same household. This confirmed that the realities of crisis and displacement were often more complex than they first appeared, especially in households where caregiving, disability, age, chronic illness, and poverty overlapped.

Circle of Wellbeing

Throughout 2026, Circle of Wellbeing has continued to provide community-based, trauma-informed support to women, girls, and children in Lebanon, with a particular focus on mental health, women’s rights, sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial support, education, and emergency assistance. This approach is consistent with the organization’s mission of creating safe spaces where women and children affected by conflict, displacement, poverty, and violence can access care, information, dignity, and opportunities for empowerment.

From January through July 2026, the organization delivered 82 sessions/workshops, reaching approximately 869 participant attendances, alongside 47 individual mental health sessions. Activities included mental health and psychosocial support sessions, trauma-informed yoga for women and children, English and educational activities for children, and awareness sessions on gender-based violence, women’s rights, safety, protection, and self-advocacy.

A major area of work during the year was the Pregnancy Support Project, supported through the Doria Fund. The project provided pregnant women with four structured sessions covering maternal mental health during pregnancy and postpartum, pregnancy and postpartum health, newborn care, women’s rights, advocacy, respectful maternity care, and protection from obstetric violence. Participants also received dignity and maternal-care kits containing essential hygiene, maternal, and newborn supplies.

The organization also expanded its psychosocial support and creative programming. This included PSS sessions addressing self-awareness, stress management, emotional expression, self-esteem, and resilience, as well as Tatreez/craft activities designed to combine creative expression, cultural connection, and skills development, which were funded by the Doria Feminist Fund. Trauma-informed yoga sessions were offered to women and children, both in person and through emerging online programming.

In response to the escalation of conflict and displacement in Lebanon, Circle of Wellbeing also strengthened its emergency response activities, including the distribution of hygiene kits, food parcels, diapers, educational materials, games, and other essential items to women, children, and families affected by the crisis. The organization adapted its activities according to the security situation and prioritized the safety of participants, staff, volunteers, and facilitators. Emergency response and dignity-based assistance remain central to the organization’s work during periods of crisis.

How To Help

If you would like to help Doria Feminist Fund, you can reach out through email at info@doriafeministfund.org