This article draws on the work of Just Associates (JASS), a feminist movement support organization that strengthens the leadership and organizing capacity of community-based women networks in Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica, to transform the structures that perpetuate inequality and violence.

The analysis is based on qualitative interviews and surveys drawn from recipients of the JASS mobilization fund (JMF), an innovative financial crisis support mechanism for feminist movements. It argues that localization strategies deployed by women’s networks supported by the JMF in response to covid-19 challenge dominant humanitarian responses that de-center feminist movements, local knowledge, and expertise.

By accounting for local knowledge generated from long histories of movement building, building collective power, and challenging racialized and gendered responses to humanitarian crises, women’s collectives and networks supported through the JMF developed contextually relevant responses that challenge patriarchal structural barriers heightened by covid-19.