A year in review: our achievements this year

As we near the end of 2024, we celebrate everything Agenda Alliance has achieved this year.

We’ve put time and effort this year into thinking carefully about how we work, and making progress towards our strategic goal of strengthening our organisation’s foundations.

Across 2024, we:

• Chose to live our feminist values and share power on our Board by introducing a co-chairing model. We welcomed two new co-chairs, Saffron Cordery and Tanya Tracey, to our Board in March.
  
• Said goodbye to two fantastic members of our team, Maisie and Nia, and spent the second half of the year refining our strategy before expanding again. We’re looking forward to recruiting new members of the team in early 2025, including a Fundraising Manager.
  
• Began deepening our approach to how we measure our impact, with support from Justice Futures.

A commitment to co-producing work with women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs has always been at the heart of Agenda’s work. However, this year there’s been some significant new and exciting milestones.

• Published our approach to working with women and girls, and why we think co-production is such a vital tool for change.
  
• Began work on our first ever mission film, funded by ROSA Voices from the Frontline, and produced in partnership with Lancashire Women. The project has been fully co-produced with our members and women with lived experience, with the expertise and support of The Saltways, and we’re excited to share it with you in early 2025.
  
• Ran our first ever Big Give appeal, which raised £10,000 for our Women’s Advisory Network (WAN). We're so proud of this group of women, who worked with us to design the campaign, and the powerful messages they shared through quotes and videos.

"One of the reasons I come to Advisory Network meetings is I finally feel listened to and love being around like-minded women who want to make positive changes for women." - Rebecca

"The Women's Advisory Network has given me a voice I never had, a voice with the services. It's given me confidence to walk into meetings and be me, not feel scared or intimidated. I can voice my opinion, because I know I'm not alone. This year, I fought to have my son returned to my care and we'll spend Christmas together this year. It's working with Agenda and the network that's helped me do this." - Sarah

We began the year sharing insights from our biggest survey of our alliance members’ vision for the alliance so far. We were delighted with the response, which gave lots of ideas for where we could strengthen and grow, which we've been trialling through the year:

• We learned that members value the evidence and insight we share and appreciate our work raising the profile of gender-specialist expertise, our national and local influencing, and our strong support of women and girls’ voices.
  
• It was clear we are seen as a clear, authoritative and intersectional voice on women and girls with multiple unmet needs, that we engage well with our members and women with lived experience and centre our values in what we do.
  
• Members have told us they want to be part of a growing intersectional feminist cross-sector movement, to drive meaningful change for women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs.
  
• We were excited and proud to run a major General Election campaign, with members working across violence against women and girls, sex work, housing and homelessness, substance use, criminal justice, infrastructure bodies and mental health involved in developing our recommendations.
  
• We have every intention of continuing to build our collective social movement next year, which is why we’re so glad to see our alliance growing. We’re proud to have welcomed the following brilliant new members this year: Milk Honey Bees, Women at the Well, Turtle Dove Cambridge, Runnymede Trust, Let Me Know, Safety4Sisters, and IRISi.

This year we:

• Released new analysis of data from the Department of Education on exclusions, showing Black Caribbean girls were excluded at double the rate of their white counterparts in 2021/22.
  
• Officially formed the Transforming Together network in the North-East, to deliver real change for women with multiple unmet needs engaging with public services. The network met for the first time in February 2024. Across an election focused summer, the network developed pledges for the North East Mayoral Combined Authority and regional Police and Crime Commissioner candidates, and were endorsed by winning NEMCA candidate, Kim McGuinness.
  
• Ran our General Election campaign, #CallingSOS, for a Secretary of State for Women and Girls with a collective letter, co-signed by more than 60 member organisations. Core to our campaign was our manifesto, and set of policy recommendations for women and girls with multiple unmet needs, developed in partnership with our alliance. We continue to advocate for women to have a stronger presence at the highest seat of power, and our aim was consistently well-received as a vital step to centre the needs of women and girls at the highest levels of government.
  
• Published ‘We Need Support’, a new briefing commissioned by Greater Manchester Combined Authority which explored the impact of child removal proceedings on women with multiple unmet needs and proposed recommendations for change.
  
• Continued amplifying the findings of our Young Women’s Justice Project, which aims to secure systemic change for young women at risk of the criminal justice system. As part of our wider dissemination, we presented the project at the Youth Custody Services Practitioners Forum, and at the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ Women in the CJS working group.

• Indy: I have been deeply proud of so much this year, but publishing the ‘We Need Support’ briefing is at the top of the list. It’s a brilliant example of how Agenda Alliance responds to issues that emerge for women and girls across the country. Commissioned by Greater Manchester Combined Authority, this report also felt personal to me as a mother. Because we meaningfully listened to women and girls in the region with lived experience of child removal, we could help shine a light on this issue. A huge thank you to those women and the specialist organisations who support them, for making it happen. The work has only just started.
  
• Jess: Hearing the Secretary of State for Justice include young women in her announcement of the Women’s Justice Board was a career highlight for me, having been advocating (with others) for many years about the particular needs for girls and young women in the system. Seeing other green shoots like the return of the Mental Health Act reform, sentencing review, and attention to girls in custody, leave me hopeful for change, and with a renewed sense of energy for the year to come.
  
• Tara: Over the course of the year, I’ve had the opportunity to work more closely with our Alliance, through our campaigns, collaborating on letters to officials, holding focus groups to develop our core policy briefings, and attending events. It’s been wonderful to feel more connected to our members, to hear about their ideas for change, and, through a year of political change and economic hardship, to affirm the feeling that we are all working towards the same goal of supporting those who experience harm.
  
• Nina: Sometimes, amongst the slower, behind-the-scenes efforts of campaigning, it can be hard to visualise the many people working away. For that reason, I’ve particularly loved the moments this year where I’ve been able to bring together passionate, dedicated women from across our movement, who have given their time and energy to speak directly to the world – our General Election video, our Women’s Advisory Network’s video for IWD, and our Big Give campaign were particular highlights.
  
• Teddy: This year I got the chance to go to an event run by one of our newer members, Milk Honey Bees, exploring Black girls' experiences of violence, wellbeing and community safety. After leaving, I reflected on how well the space was held, it included grounding exercises to open and close, and a wellbeing practitioner who all attendees could go to for support. It was a reminder of how important it is to make time for this, especially where individuals are invited to share and reflect on potentially difficult experiences.

Thanks to our funders: A B Charitable Trust, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Firebird Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, JABBS, The Pilgrim Trust, ROSA Fund, Sharegift, Smallwood Trust, Treebeard Trust and Triangle Trust.

We want to express particular gratitude to everyone who supported us in our first ever Big Give campaign this year. We are grateful to everyone who supports our work, whether that’s through donating, receiving our newsletter, or sharing our updates on social media. You all are a crucial part of our movement, campaigning for change so all women and girls can thrive.