Anit-Racism Movement (ARM) / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Priority Areas

Supporting feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements to thrive, to be a driving force in challenging systems of oppression, and to co-create feminist realities.

Resourcing Feminist Movements

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The “Where is the Money?” #WITM survey is now live! Dive in and share your experience with funding your organizing with feminists around the world.

Learn more and take the survey

Around the world, feminist, women’s rights, and allied movements are confronting power and reimagining a politics of liberation. The contributions that fuel this work come in many forms, from financial and political resources to daily acts of resistance and survival.

AWID’s Resourcing Feminist Movements (RFM) Initiative shines a light on the current funding ecosystem, which range from self-generated models of resourcing to more formal funding streams.

Through our research and analysis, we examine how funding practices can better serve our movements. We critically explore the contradictions in “funding” social transformation, especially in the face of increasing political repression, anti-rights agendas, and rising corporate power. Above all, we build collective strategies that support thriving, robust, and resilient movements.

Our Actions

Recognizing the richness of our movements and responding to the current moment, we:

  • Create and amplify alternatives: We amplify funding practices that center activists’ own priorities and engage a diverse range of funders and activists in crafting new, dynamic models  for resourcing feminist movements, particularly in the context of closing civil society space.

  • Build knowledge: We explore, exchange, and strengthen knowledge about how movements are attracting, organizing, and using the resources they need to accomplish meaningful change.

  • Advocate: We work in partnerships, such as the Count Me In! Consortium, to influence funding agendas and open space for feminist movements to be in direct dialogue to shift power and money.

Related Content

Type

Festival Film Club: Leitis in Waiting & Latin/Central American Program

In this selection of films you will find the voices of filmmakers who are not content with simply recording the feminist realities that palpitate in every corner of this vast and diverse territory. These are works that from their very conceptualization are questioning for what, by whom, and how films and videos are made. They understand film to be an instrument of struggle, something more than images to be enjoyed on a screen. These are individual or collective filmmakers who see film and video making as an instrument to promote discussion, open a debate, and thus serve as a resource for popular and feminist pedagogies.

Activism in the Middle East and North Africa

In our 2015 Online Tribute we honor five Women Human Rights Defenders murdered in the Middle East and North Africa region. These defenders worked for women and civil rights as lawyers and activists. Their death highlights the often dangerous and difficult working conditions in their respective countries. Please join AWID in honoring these women, their activism and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and 16Days.

Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file

 

Snippet FEA São Paulo City Center (EN)

São Paulo’s City Center

Source: Centro de população de rua da cidade de São Paulo

A woman sitting on the floor on a piece of cloth and a cup for change in front of her
    

Abandoned / Unoccupied Buildings
Illustration of an abandoned, run down building to depict the housing crisis

Population living in the streets 
 

31,000

  

40.000

6. Conduct desk research

Desk research can be done throughout your research. It can assist you with framing, help you to choose survey questions and provide insights to your results.

In this section

Giving context

Conducting desk research throughout your research process can assist you with framing, help you to choose survey questions and provide contextual clarity or interesting insights to your survey results, such as comparing similarities and differences between your survey results and information produced by civil society and donors.

Perhaps you notice trends in your survey data and want to understand them.

For example, your survey data may reveal that organization budgets are shrinking, but it cannot tell you why this is happening. Reviewing publications can give you context on potential reasons behind such trends.

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Building on existing knowledge

Desk research also ensures you are building your research on the existing knowledge regarding your topic, confirming the validity and relevance of your findings.

They may be complimentary or contradictory to existing knowledge, but they must speak to existing data on the topic.

To ensure comprehensive research of the entire funding landscape related to your topic, look at a diverse set of funding sectors.

You can consider:

  • Women’s Funds
  • Private and Public Foundations
  • International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs)
  • Bilateral and Multilateral Agencies
  • Private Sector Actors
  • Individual Philanthropists
  • Crowdfunders

Include any other relevant sectors to this research.

For example, you may decide that it is also important to research local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

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Potential sources for desk research (non-exhaustive)

1. Donors’ websites and annual reports

These are direct sources of information about what funders are actually doing and generally contain information on policies and budgets. Researching this before interviewing donors can result in more focused questions and a stronger interview.

2. Online sources of information

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Previous step

5. Conduct interviews

Next step

7. Synthesize your research findings

Estimated time:

• 1-2 months

People needed:

• 1 or more research person(s)

Previous step

5. Conduct interviews

Next step

7. Synthesize your research findings

Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

Snippet FEA Metzineres activists (EN)

 
A crowd of people sitting in front of a banner which says ‘support, don't punish”;
Photo of two women talking to each other, one of them is holding a handheld fan.
Crowd of people with a black banner that says Metzineres in yellow.
Photo of four people sitting on the ground and talking
Photo people with plants around them, most of them sitting and clapping to a person who is walking in the middle

Metzineres activists in action

Thank you to our partners

Our partners

This project is built in collaboration with:

FEMNET-logo (grey)
Rutgers-logo (grey)

Our contributors

We would also like to thank the following people for their valuable contribution:

  • Nebila Abdulmelik
  • Radhika Balakrishnan
  • Selamawit Tesfaye
  • Hakima Abbas
  • Patita Tingoi
  • Ana Abelenda

Snippet FEA Land and Agroecology

LAND AND 

AGROECOLOGY

Rural Women Caring for Nature and Communities

Twitter Test

Snippet FEA Get Involved Story 2 (EN)

GET INVOLVED!

You can follow Nous Sommes la Solution
on Facebook and support their work by donating here.

Test basic page

Snippet FEA Exclusion and Stigma (EN)

An illustration of a megaphone in navy blue. Lines representing sound waves are coming out the speaker end, in burgundy.

THE EXCLUSION, STIGMA AND INSTITUTIONAL ABUSE
that trans and travesti people continue to face on a daily basis

Ali Chavez Leeds

tasseography print justice. Print on paper, 4 color screen print, 8.5x11, 2016
Print on paper, 4 color screen print, 8.5x11, 2016

 “Tasseography”

Tasseography is the study of coffee grounds and/or tea leaves for the act of divination. It is a practice that has been passed down through the women on my Armenian side of the family and was taught to me by my mother, she from her mother, and so on. As I would watch my Nana read the coffee grounds from the Armenian coffee prepared for family and friends, I would notice how often times she would see what she would want to say. These prints say some of the things I want to see in the world; I hope you do too.  

Our Promise
Prints on paper, Relief, 11 × 14 in, 2021

 “Our Promise”

This print celebrates the resilience, sacrifice and strength of SWANA freedom fighters throughout history and the solidarity that exists. It was originally inspired by an article I read about an exhibition held in Tatvan, a district of Bitlis that was highlighting the Armenian presence in the region. My ancestors are from Bitlis, now within the borders of modern day Turkey. 

looking at the cup
Prints on paper, Relief, 8.5 × 11 in, 2020

“Looking at the Cup”

Tasseography (the study of reading coffee grounds) is a cultural practice that Armenian women have used for hundreds of years to speak among and to each other, a coded language to open up conversations, to build inter-relatedness and weave connections.

About Ali Chavez Leeds 

]Ali Chavez Leeds portrait
Ali Cat Leeds (she/they) is an artist and print maker living on unceded Cowlitz, Multnomah and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde land at the confluence of two rivers, also know as Portland, Oregon. She produces her work under the name Entangled Roots Press. Their prints mingle the literal and metaphorical to illuminate and comment upon the world around us. Relief, screen, and letterpress prints span from the carnage of clear-cuts to the beauty of peoples movements. Ali’s prints pull from ancestral herstories and push towards liberatory futures; entangling lessons from gardens, symbols in coffee cups, woven threads from Armenia and Euskal Herria, to the printed page.

Snippet FEA collaborator and allies Photo 4 (EN)

This photo represents Sopo speaking at a public event indoors. She is holding the microphone while reading her notes and sitting on a chair between three other people who are either speakers or moderators.