Our History
Will Muir and Rujuta Teredesai initially founded a venture called Solar Cinemas in 2009, which was intended to provide information on social and development issues to residents of low-income communities through cinema. They soon found that women and girls were unable to attend these cinema screenings in their communities due to a number of gender inequity issues – women and girls had limited leisure time and mobility due to an inequality in the division of housework, concerns about sexual harassment and safety, and familial restrictions. This awareness, along with the fact that women’s empowerment programmes generally focus on women and girls, gave Rujuta and Will the incentive to work on gender equity through focusing on the attitudes and behaviour of men and boys in the communities and they co-founded Equal Community Foundation.
Co-Founders
William Muir, Co-Founder
Will is an experienced professional having held senior management positions in corporate and social sector international organisations. In addition to supporting the team on core operations, he leads fundraising and partnerships.
Business administration and development of management and operations strategy are some of his core strengths.
He is extremely passionate about raising awareness and building leadership around the approach of engaging boys and men to ensure scaling of the approach.
Rujuta Teredesai, Co-Founder
Rujuta trained as a journalist, studied English Literature and Print Journalism before moving into the non-profit sector. She co-founded Equal Community Foundation with Will Muir in 2010, serving as Executive Director until 2018. She led programme development, delivery and team building, built the organisation’s scaling model, and co-led on strengthening funding and governance infrastructure.
After ECF, Rujuta spent seven years at GlobalGiving, working across functions to reduce barriers and enable civil society organisations’ access to funding. She led Insights, Regional Advisory and Partnerships, prioritising equity in practice.
Rujuta now leads Practice Exchange at Family for Every Child, a global alliance of civil society organisations focused on child protection.
She continues to be a strong advocate for gender equity and for understanding how this approach intersects with other issues. Rujuta remains a lifelong supporter of ECF.