At the AVPN Global Conference 2025 in Hong Kong, our CEO Zahida Fizza Kabir joined global leaders on the panel “Scaling Gender Equality: Trust, Alignment, and Collective Action.”

She reflected on SAJIDA Foundation’s 32-year journey, highlighting how investing in women consistently delivers stronger returns - for families, economies, and societies at large. Yet, as philanthropy shifts towards blended finance and impact investing, she posed a critical question: Are we reaching women at the very bottom of the pyramid? For the ultra-poor, especially women, blended finance must be complemented with grants to ensure they are not left behind.

She emphasized that advancing gender equality requires more than isolated efforts or parallel systems. The real opportunity lies in engaging both public and private sectors, aligning resources to co-create out-of-the box solutions that truly work for women.

Finally, she reflected that being effective means staying grounded: to walk in women’s shoes, to embrace mistakes as learnings, and to evolve into a genuine learning organization, one that constantly rethinks and adapts models to better serve women’s lives and futures.