The Elas Fund was invited to present itself - as a success story - in New York during the week of September 22-26, as part of the dissemination of research on women's rights and relations with companies, carried out by the OAK Foundation, AWID and other partners. The first agenda at the conference, "Women's Moving Millions", was presented by Reuters. Representatives of major corporations were present, including the President of the Avon Foundation in the United States.

OAK's research is about corporations and women's rights organizations and language between them and indicates something that the ELAS Fund had already discovered in 2007, when, concerned that companies were interested in our work but not making partnerships a reality, we organized a workshop with Nádia Rebouças to see if we could find out what was wrong. That's when the light came on. We weren't speaking the same language as the companies. 

OAK is now pointing out that we do indeed have different discourses and language. And the ELAS Fund, through its General Coordinator, Amalia E. Fischer P, brought her experience and the changes ELAS had to make to its language and discourse in order to have a good dialogue with companies and create awareness in the business world of the importance of investing in women's rights. Amalia told our story, going through the successful partnerships with Chevron, Mac and the Avon Institute, built on the changes ELAS adopted in its strategies for approaching indispensable partners. Today, for example, we can count on resources in the order of 2 million reais from the Avon Institute's Speak Without Fear Fund to make 31 projects happen, all over Brazil, with the imprint of our regional and cultural diversity, and also to train their managers to optimize the use of resources. The success story of the ELAS Fund has left important international organizations and companies impressed and admired.

And our international agenda has grown. The ELAS Fund was invited by the International Network of Women's Funds and by the Funds of Europe to offer training in fundraising and raising funds with companies and, once again, together with OAK, to be present at a new presentation, now at the Women's Forum in November.[L1] in Deauville, France. Kaka Verdade, our Executive Coordinator, will be there.