Criterion Institute, in partnership with ANDE, invites you to join us for our signature TOOLKIT workshop designed to help you explore possibilities of how you might use systems of finance as a tool to advance gender equality and social justice goals. Held on the side of the ANDE Annual Conference, the workshop will introduce participants to the terminology of finance, familiarize them with the logic of finance, and uncover leverage points and opportunities to influence the system. Regardless of your starting place, experience, or comfort with finance you will find that the TOOLKIT workshop creates a much-needed bridge between the worlds of finance and social change.

While financial systems have in many ways been designed and used by a capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal system to reinforce injustice and inequality, Criterion’s newly released report “Fostering a Feminist Financial Imagination: A Radical Conversation about Finance, Feminist Futures, and Transformative Change” is premised on the idea that we can change that. It posits that if we allow ourselves and others to believe that unjust systems are entrenched and unchangeable, we cede too much power to those defending a status quo that fundamentally is not working for too many people around the world.

Criterion Institute is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to expanding what is seen as possible for using finance to create transformative social change. Criterion has spent the past two decades working with partners to design financial solutions to advance social justice, gender equality, and economic development goals. Our work is about challenging and changing the power dynamics in using finance for social change. We seek to transform whose voices are heard, whose expertise is valued, and whose metrics define success.