At the upcoming International AWID Forum in Brazil during September 8-11, we seek to deepen our reflection on self and collective care, wellbeing, joy, and pleasure, as integral components in our struggles for rights and justice.
The Forum is one step in our collective journey to collect and build knowledges of care, wellbeing and healing justice that respond to our diverse experiences and identities, languages and cultures. This journey is indispensable for our efforts to build collective power, and to embody the feminist futures we dream of.
Have you wondered about...
- How we can take care of ourselves and each other in our struggles, and in situations of conflict and crisis?
- What practices, rituals, knowledge(s) of care are being shared and passed on intergenerationally?
- How can we create organizations and movements where we are impassioned and inspired to work for our cause while centering our individual and collective wellbeing?
These are some of the questions we aspire to explore together in the upcoming eDiscussion on 22 - 26 August 2016 opened by a webinar on 22 August from 9:00-10:00 AM EDT.
For conversion to other time zones, please visit Time and Date
The eDiscussion is open to everyone and is hosted by the Black Feminisms Forum and the inter-regional Advisory Group on Wellbeing at AWID Forum.
eDiscussion calendar :
22 August: 1 hour webinar to start the discussion
- Language of the Webinar: This webinar will be held in English (August 22, 2016 from 9:00-10:00 AM EDT).
22-26 August: Join the online discussion!
- Languages of the eDiscussion: English, Spanish, French and Portuguese
Participate in a Knowledge-Building Process!
We offer this Concept Note on Self and Collective Care and Wellbeing developed by the Advisory Group as an initial material for discussion. The Concept Note will be revised to reflect the contributions in the eDiscussion, and hopefully spark conversations at the Forum and beyond. This is a living document. We hope to continue enriching this Concept Note as we build and deepen our knowledge.
Submission of Content
Share with us recommended reading links, publications, images, videos, and any other content that can enrich us in our discussion and our future engagement with this theme.
Join the conversation online
Check back here soon for more information on the eDiscussion (August 22 - 26, 2016)!
Unable to participate in the online discussion?
Email us your thoughts, ideas, images, drawings, short recordings and videos and any other format you are comfortable with. We will then share this content with all the participants.
Webinar Speakers
Lin Chew
Lin Chew is a feminist human rights activist, mother, grandmother and potter. From the early 1980’s, Lin has worked intensively on migrant and sex workers’ issues, forced labour and slavery-like practices, in the Netherlands and globally and in programmes that support women’s strategies to resist and overcome the negative impacts of cultures and religions on their rights. Lin is co-founder and Director of the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE). The most recent programme of IWE focused on deepening conceptual and practical knowledge of Feminist Leadership that is Transformative and Sustainable, that includes internal (personal) as well as collective processes of reflexivity and mindfulness as necessary elements. She has served for more than a decade on governance and advisory structures of local and international women’s funds: Her Fund, Global Fund for Women, Mama Cash. Lin will also be co-hosting the eDiscussion.
Lucia Victor Jayaseelan
Lucia Victor Jayaseelan is a feminist activist and as a human rights lawyer works on labour rights issues and women workers rights. She has taken up issues of political detainees, refugees, migrants and on VAW. Her work spans Malaysia, UK and globally through Committee for Asian Women based in Bangkok. Since 2011 through Institute of Women’s Empowerment Lucia works on a programme of Feminist Leadership that is Transformative and Sustainable. Lucia is also a practitioner in various healing therapies, including Reiki and Jin Shin Jyutsu. She continues to provide treatments and self-help workshops to women workers and activists to sustain and develop personal health and that of their organisations. Lucia will also be co-hosting the eDiscussion.
Aina-Nia Ayo'dele
Aina-Nia Ayo’dele is a feminist spiritual activist. This renowned leadership development trainer, ancient wisdom teacher and life coach is on a mission to supporting women worldwide in remembering their power™. She is the founder and managing director of Sacred Women International (SWI), an organization that inspires individuals to remember and reclaim their power so as to create sustainable changes in their lives, as well as influence economic, social and political changes in their families, communities and the world. Aina-Nia passionately shares her innovative theories and techniques on self-care as a means to supporting personal and organizational resilience for those in social and political movements. Aina-Nia is a doctoral student and was recently nominated as Top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada. She has received recognitions by both the Canadian and USA media including Heart & Soul and Planet Africa magazines.
Muyoti Mukonambi (Alix)
Alix is an artivist, social innovator, healer, and Sacred Women International’s Advocacy Coordinator. In 2015, Alix culminated as a Sacred Leader, under the mentorship of Aina-Nia Ayo’dele within the Sacred Leaders Training (SLT™) Program. Alix has been raised and educated by diverse revolutionary communities of practice in Toronto and East Afrika. She is grounded in community education within the social justice movements for queer/trans rights and the Pan-Afrikan struggle for liberation. She is currently living her soul vision of cultivating healing arts spaces with global black village through reclaiming Afrikan ancestral practices, plant medicines, music, and digital arts. Alix is infinitely grateful for the blessings of re/learning healing journeys from those who carry the sage secrets of loving.
Co-Hosts of the eDiscussion
Shawna Wakefield
Shawna Wakefield is a women’s rights and gender justice consultant and activist, who has worked in the field for nearly 20 years. Between 2008-2015, Shawna was Oxfam International’s Senior Gender Justice Lead, heading organizational strategy on women’s rights. Previously she was a regional gender advisor for Oxfam in East Asia, a researcher on gender and decision making in Afghanistan, and a program specialist with UNIFEM on economic security and rights. In addition to consulting, Shawna also teaches yoga in community centers in New York, including trauma sensitive classes for domestic violence survivors and people of color and workshops on yoga and social justice. She is particularly interested in transformative feminist leadership, movement building, collaboration and organizational learning and culture and finding ways to support self and collective care and wellbeing across all of her work.
Charo Mina-Rojas (co-hosting the Spanish speaking eDiscussion)
Charo Mina-Rojas is an Afro-Colombian human rights defender with more than two decades years of activism at the national and international levels. Charo is member of the Black Communities’ Process in Colombia (PCN) and the Kuagro Ri Changaina Ri PCN (Black women’s community of PCN). Her work focuses on the defense of the collective human rights of Afro-descendant people and Black/Afro-descendant women, centered on the right to be different but equal (the right to BE), the defense and protection of the Afro-descendant ancestral territories, and the right to self-determination. She has played an instrumental role exposing gross crimes and human rights violations against Afro-descendant women to make the Colombian government accountable, and provide attention and protection for Afro-descendant women leaders and human rights defenders. Recently she was part of a historical Black women’s mobilization that walked to Bogota and seized a government’s building to pressure for the national authorities to act to protect the life and the ancestral territories from the impacts of mining policies and illegal mining exploitation. Charo is the mother of an 11 year-old future revolutionary and leader.
Ana María Hernández Cárdenas (co-hosting the Spanish speaking eDiscussion)
Ana María Hernández Cárdenas is founder of Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equity Oaxaca A.C, a feminist organization that promotes gender equality and the full recognition of women’s rights. Ana María’s work focuses on the defense of women’s human rights, in particular the access to a life free from violence, the right to choose in private and public life, women’s political and community participation and integrated protection for women human rights defenders. She coordinates the Self-care Strategy at the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) as also “La Serena” House, a space for self-care and healing for women human rights defenders.