Sometime in 1970, before the death of Haitian President François Duvalier, his paramilitaries stormed, ransacked, and occupied the Port-au-Prince headquarters of La Ligue Feminine d’Action Sociale (The Women’s League for Social Action, LFAS), Haiti’s first women’s rights organization, created in 1934. Moments later, the Ligue’s organizers ran to the site and rescued their archives, which had been dumped on the street. The women dusted off and carried the records back home with them, presumably to rebuild on the feminist work that had been almost scattered.^[1]

Twenty-seven years later, after the 1997 coup d’état in Haïti, a group of feminist educators and lawyers started a conversation. They cut through masculinist national concerns around contested elections and state-building in order to discuss the widespread and intersecting issue of gender-based violence in the country. So started Asosyasyon Fanm Soley Dayiti (AFASDA) (“Sun Women’s Association of Haiti”), an action network whose mission was to fill a gap to address violence against women. 

Since then, AFASDA has collaborated with a number of partners to lay down groundwork--including services, campaigns, women’s rights trainings, legal aid, and leadership trainings to support women survivors of violence, in a context where 27% of Haitian women report having experienced physical violence by their husband or another person by the age of 15.

Created as a form of resistance, AFASDA’s mission is to work with Haitian women and girls to advance their overall development, the respect of their rights, and also to contribute to reframing violence against women from a domestic problem to a national one.^[2]

The organisation, an AWID member since 2016, has collaborated in an extensive women’s mobilization campaign, and also coordinated a program promoting national dialogue in partnership with community radio stations.

Celebrating their 20th anniversary, strengthened by experience and strategic alliances, the organization pursues its mission and sees new opportunities for women to exercise their full potential and to meaningfully contribute to the rebuilding the country.  

“For example, our most recent success has been the investigation and prosecution of a police officer who sexually assaulted a young student, with a new law that was just passed,” says Elvire Eugène, Executive Director of AFASDA and Cap-Haïtien resident, a city in northern Haiti. 

At the national level, AFASDA is a founding member of the National Coordination for Advocacy on Women's Rights (CONAP) and the Nap Vanse platform. The latter is a member of the National Consultations on Women Victims of Violence, a founder of REFAGNO (Far North Women’s Network).

AFASDA has more than 18 branches across the country, as well as local committees and nearly 3,000 members (composed of women, girls and youth) who participate in decision-making and direction of the work as part of a general assembly.

The organisation is part of the frontline in the fight against gender-based violence (psycho-legal support, awareness raising, etc.). To contribute to the decrease in gender-based violence cases, AFASDA offers legal support to victims, provides temporary housing, organizes discussion and debate seminars and awareness raising activities for the general public. 

“Our work alongside partners contributes to the prevention of violence against women and girls and social reintegration through public awareness raising on violence against women and girls and to legal authorities and other key actors on the difficulties in caring for women victims of violence.” The organization provides women victims of violence with suitable care and facilitates access to appropriate services.     

“We’re also activists, that is to say, we have a responsibility to go into other neighbourhoods to talk about violence. Sometimes we assume people know what violence is but we later realize there are several neighbourhoods where people don’t know what ite is. It’s up to us to go find them and talk to them about violence."

"Because in the office we receive a lot of cases proving that people don’t know what violence is. Sometimes they face it but don’t know where to go. AFASDA represents a point of reference.” 

“That is to say, we’re there to help, to help them recuperate and if there is a misunderstanding with their partner, we have a duty to call the partner too. We send him a letter and when both return to the office, we mediate between the woman and the partner. After repeated visits it’s up to them to hold back.”

The Haitian contingent at the Black Feminisms Forum and the 2016 AWID International Forum consisted of several AFASDA members, including Cathy Elvariste and Myriam Dubuisson, who led a session titled “Toward a Strong Coalition of Women’s Organizations at the Francophone Caribbean Country Level”.  

“The last AWID Forum created new openings and opportunities for us and introduced us to activists from different countries.”

Elvariste and Dubuisson engaged with other feminists from across Africa and the diaspora, creating a transnational pivot to complement their work at home. 

“We hope that the follow-up to the Forum will be effective, that certain actions will be taken and that all countries around the world will engage in the fight for substantive respect for women’s rights.”

[1] For a loving and comprehensive narration on the Haitian women’s movement, see: Sanders, Grace Louise. “La voix des femmes: Haitian Women’s Rights, National Politics and Black Activism in Port-au-Prince and Montreal: 1934-1986”. 2013.

[2] For a perspective on the state of Haitian feminist organizing to end violence against women in the last 25 years, see: Louis, Eunide. “Violences faites aux femmes en Haïti : État des lieux et perspectives”. Haiti Perspectives. Vol. 2. no. 3. Automne 2013.

Sentimos Diverso was born on 12 March 2006, in Bogotá, Colombia. Since 2010, the collective has established itself in Quito, Ecuador, where it currently carries out its activities. The group defines itself as a “feminist collective that mobilizes to create and to develop projects and actions aimed at empowering women, young people and people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, to demand their human, sexual and reproductive rights.”

In the face of discrimination: action, unity and solidarity

Sentimos Diverso was created after witnessing how two boys were targeted  one night in Chapinero, a locality in Bogotá. “We saw how two boys, very young boys, were chased after by a band of bone-heads (a derivative of the skinheads, with neo-nazi sympathies), when they were trying to get into Teatrón, a very trendy gay bar. We never found out what happened to them, but we understood the importance of opening a place for homo-socialization. Something different from the rumba, a place that could become a safe space, where we could trust, where we could be who we are. We believe art and literature as a way to allow young people to express their personal searches and interests, a way to find themselves and to meet other people.”

When they formed the collective, their objective was that the society in which they lived, the youth movement, the  lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in the city, could “understand what it meant to be a diverse young person, we wanted to be understood as subjects of rights, we wanted to transform the idea of politics, to focus it on daily life and to make those experiences visible”.

Then, six friends – Catalina, Nikita, Viviana, Marleny, Eduardo and Gabrielle – put themselves to work. The first activity they organized was the “Literary canelazo” (canelazo is an alcoholic drink with cinnamon), because “it just combined our  interest for performance and literature; developing workshops on themes such as the body, the city and diversity”. They brought together a number of young people who didn't define themselves solely as LGBTI or for whom it was dangerous to do so.

“We played with the names – heteroconfused, lesboflexible, bicurious, transindecisive and many others, to make people understand that we were not so different”.

By 2010, the six had taken many different paths in life, and only one person remained from the original group, migrating to Ecuador and taking the organization with them.

The new place, the new and different context, posed new challenges which led to widening the scope of work, now including issues of sexual and reproductive rights. They focus on women, teenagers and young people “with whom we also work on empowerment, awareness  raising about their context, their rights and how to demand them. This work is done through the methodologies of popular education, non-formal education, the arts (theater, photography, video, painting) and communication”.

Strategies for transformative work

Sentimos Diverso develops its activities and its commitment to social transformation through four lines of work.

Firstly, a pedagogic line, in which the collective uses playful, experiential and artistic strategies such as painting, theater of the oppressed, photography, creative writing and video. These strategies have helped develop methodologies for their work on disseminating and addressing themes of sexual and gender diversity, sexual and reproductive rights. They offer workshops to many different populations such as teenagers, young people, LGBTIQ people, women, refugees, migrants, victims of violence, teenage mothers and teachers.

They have also produced publications in this line of work, such us “From tale to tale I tell myself diverse”, which arose from the work they did  with young people in Bogotá; “12 things about me” is the result of almost four years of activities with teenagers in Quito; and “Cirila and Silbato are friends”, are materials used as a strategy to prevent sexual violence in risk zones affected by natural disasters.

Secondly, they have a research line, developed to gain a deeper analysis of the realities faced by the populations with which they work.

“We are currently in the process of writing the conclusions of research titled 'Eyes that don't see: teenage motherhood, violence and life strategies’, in which we explore the activities of  teenage mothers-  how their work is exploited, their jobs in domestic work and care work, whether they attend school, their family and couple relationships and the new vulnerabilities they face”.

Within this area they also work on “creating the feminist hacker space in Ecuador, aimed at the security of activists and the development of self-care strategies in cyberspace. We are currently in the process of knowledge sharing and developing tools for disseminating this information.”

Another line of work is communication, an area of high interest, and in which they are very active, regularly updating the collective's web page, where they publish think pieces and interviews about what's going on in Ecuador, and in the region, related to  sexual and reproductive rights, women's rights and LGTBIQ rights. “Now in 2017 we are developing  journalistic work, analyzing these issues from a regional point of view, as a follow up to the Millennium Development Goals, especially the one linked to gender equality. We have already published our first article, "No nos pidan que volvamos al silencio" [in Spanish].”

The fourth key line of the collective’s work  is about inter-institutional relationships, focused on establishing networks with public agencies, social organizations and activists. “We believe joint work can make a difference, and that's why we have been able to establish a  network with other organizations from the region. For instance, we have been actively involved in the Campaign for an Inter-American Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights. We have also developed works such as Al Borde (On the edge) Audiovisual School-Ecuador, led by Mujeres al Borde (Women on the Edge) from Colombia. We are also advocating in local spaces such as the Feminist Meeting of Ecuador, to be held during 2017.”

Inspiring us to reflect

The work done by Sentimos Diverso invites us to think once again about how to dismantle heteropatriarchy. Its most creative mark seems to be related to education.

They very proudly talk about one of their most recent publications, “12 Things About Me”, a notebook compiling some of the work they carry out with teenagers and youngsters, in schools and children's shelters in the city of Quito.

“The notebook is based on creativity and tries to move people to reflect, and though it has been thought of for teenagers and young people, people of all ages can get involved in the activities it proposes. We took the training books for creative writing as a starting point and then we added our own artistic and pedagogical perspective. In this way, we got 12 generative questions to think about identity, memory, gender, self-esteem, empowerment, sexual orientation and the life project. This teaching tool came out of our workshops with teenagers. We planned to edit some educational handbooks, but after a creative process we had inside Sentimos Diverso, we reached this idea, which has been very well received and launched during the 13th AWID Forum in 2016. Currently, we are using it as a tool for our work with high school students in Quito.”

“We are aware that often times it is mobilizing and getting resources that determines how long an organization or a collective can persist.”

In the beginning the members of the collective funded the organization themselves. Since 2007 they have been supported by Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, who “have believed in our work, in the activities we carry out, and they have been a key part of our growth as activists and as a social organization, because they have supported us, not only by providing funding, but also through trainings and meetings which have been crucial for Sentimos Diverso to remain active”.

Since 2014, the support given by Mama Cash has had  a great influence on  the growth and institutionalization of Sentimos Diverso in Ecuador. “We have some projects now which are growing, and we are aware that they must have their own budget, so little by little we get people who believe in us and take the risk of supporting us. Now, we are in that process with the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), who has decided to support us with a project temporarily called “special Editorials”, focused on strengthening our capacities in the area of communications”.