Our Supporters

Bertha Foundation fights for a more just world. The Foundation envisions a society in which activists build collective power, stories come from many different voices and the law is used as a tool for justice.

Bertha Foundation supports activists, storytellers and lawyers who are working to bring about social and economic justice and equal rights for all. While powerful on their own, the Foundation has learned that – if given the resources to connect and collaborate – their combined power is much greater than the sum of its parts.

With support from Bertha Foundation and as a member of the global Bertha Justice Network, EELC hosts Bertha Justice Fellows to train the next generation of human rights and movement lawyers in pursuit of social justice. The Bertha Justice Fellowship Program provides two-year fellowships to emerging lawyers at the best public interest law centres around the world and aims to train 1,000 lawyers in the next ten years.

The Claude Leon Foundation is a South African charitable trust, resulting from a bequest by Claude Leon (1884 – 1972).

Sigrid Rausing Trust is a UK grant making foundation, founded in 1995 by Sigrid Rausing to support human rights globally. Since then, the Trust has given away approximately £191.9 million to human rights organisations all over the world. The Trust runs nine programmes and it makes grants according to these programmes. The programmes are: 1) Advocacy, Research and Litigation, 2) Detention, Torture and Death Penalty, 3) Human Rights Defenders, 4) Free Expression, 5) Transitional Justice, 6) Women’s Rights, 7) LGBTI Rights, 8) Xenophobia and Intolerance and 9) Transparency and Accountability.

The Open Society Foundation is a grant making foundation founded by George Soros in April 1993 to promote the ideal of an open society in South Africa; an ideal which includes democracy, a market economy, a strong civil society, respect for minorities and tolerance for divergent opinions.

The foundation has been established in the conviction that the collapse of a closed, apartheid society will not lead automatically to the emergence of an open society in South Africa. In its work the foundation encourages new approaches and ideas that contribute to the creating of an open society in South Africa. The foundaton is committed to promoting the values, institutions and practices of an open, non-racial and non-sexist, democratic, civil society. It works for a vigorous and autonomous civil society in which the rule of law and divergent opinions are respected.

The Cameron Schrier Foundation supports non-profit organizations primarily in the U.S. and South Africa. Since its inception in 2006, the Foundation has worked to develop young leaders, promote education equity, encourage an active civil society, support educational institutions, and help communities and individuals in need.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) is a political institution affiliated to – but independent from – the German Green Party. The Foundation’s foremost task is to support citizen participation that seeks to deepen democracy and social justice. This includes advocacy and action to uphold human rights, promote pro-poor development that is environmentally sustainable, realise gender equality as well as protect the freedom of individuals against excessive state and economic power. The foundation works in more than 30 countries worldwide.