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.
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.
Abby was a pioneering feminist, human-rights activist and former McGill University epidemiologist.
Abby was renowned for championing social causes and for her insightful critiques of reproductive technologies and other medical topics. Specifically, she campaigned against what she called the "geneticization" of reproductive technologies, against hormone replacement therapy and for better, longer research before the approval of discoveries such as the vaccines against the human papillomavirus.
On the news of her passing, friends and colleagues described her fondly as an “ardent advocate” for women’s health.
Match up your favourite messages below with these images for Facebook. These messages may also be used on Twitter via private Direct Messages, which don’t have character limits.
Facebook messages for your personal profile
The wait is over! We can all register for the 2016 AWID Forum. So excited to reconnect with fellow activists and re-imagine our feminist futures. See you there, in Brazil!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
Loving the thought of re-imagining feminist futures with 2,000 people from lots of amazing women's rights and social justice movements at the AWID Forum. Register and meet me in Brazil!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
Facebook messages for your organization’s page
Registration is now open for the 2016 AWID Forum in Costa do Sauípe, Brazil! This is not just any event - it’s a key space for women’s rights and social justice activists to come together and re-imagine our feminist futures. You won’t want to miss it!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
Join us at the 2016 AWID Forum in Brazil! Activists and movements from all over the world will come together to celebrate, strategize, inspire and renew ourselves and our collective struggles. Register now!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
The 2016 AWID Forum will be a historic global gathering of women’s rights and social justice activists and movements. Join us there to break the silos, strengthen solidarity and leverage our collective power. Register now!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
The 2016 AWID Forum will be a historic global gathering of women’s rights and social justice activists and movements. Join us to celebrate, strategize, inspire and renew ourselves and leverage our collective power. Registration is now open!http://forum.awid.org/forum16/
Jacqueline was a pioneering Malian/Burkinabe feminist, nationalist and educator.
She taught English in Senegal, before being recruited in 1961 as an English teacher at the Lycée Philippe Zinda Kaboré in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Through her activism, she was involved in the popular uprising of January 3, 1966. Between 1961 and 1966, Jacqueline was also responsible for the trade union press, Voices of the Teachers. She was appointed as the head of the Normal Course for Young Girls (now known as Nelson Mandela High School) until 1974, and dedicated herself to girls’ education and advancing women’s rights.
In 1984 she was awarded the Paul G. Hoffmann Award for outstanding work in national and international development.
As feminists struggling for gender, peace, economic, social and environmental justice, we know there is no single recipe for success but an array of possibilities that can and are making change happen. The menu of options is as diverse as our movements and the communities in which we live and struggle.
Before we dare to present some of the feminist imaginations for another world, here are the principles around which we base our propositions:
1. Self-determined development from the local to the global
We believe there is no one model for all and that everyone has a right to claim and contribute to building another world that is possible, as the World Social Forum motto puts it.
This includes the right to participate in democratic governance and to influence one’s future – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Economic self-determination gives peoples the ability to take control over their natural resources and use those resources for their own ends or collective use. Furthermore, women’s economic agency is fundamental to mitigating the often cyclical nature of poverty, denial of education, safety, and security.
2. Rights, substantive equality and justice are at the core of the economy
The principle of substantive equality is laid out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international human rights instruments. This principle is fundamental for development and achieving a just economy as it affirms that all human beings are born free and equal.
Non-discrimination is an integral part of the principle of equality that ensures that no one is denied their rights because of factors such as race, gender, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or birth.
The inherent dignity of all persons without distinction must be upheld and respected. While States are responsible for ensuring the use of maximum available resources for the fulfilment of human rights, reclaiming rights and dignity is fundamentally a key space for civil society struggle and popular mobilization.
3. Just distribution for all, without monopolization (the anti-greed principle)
This principle, exercised through organized efforts to transform unjust institutions, guides the restoration of balance between "participation" (input) and "distribution" (output) when either principle is violated.
It puts limits on monopolistic accumulations of capital and other abuses of property. This concept is founded on an economy model that is based on fairness, and justice.
4. Feminist and cross-movement solidarity is key
In order to make change happen, we need strong and diverse feminist networks. We need movements building solidarity from the personal to the political, from the local to the global and back.
Building collective power through movements helps convert the struggle for human rights, equality and justice into a political force for change that cannot be ignored.
“Only movements can create sustained change at the levels that policy and legislation alone cannot achieve.”
So'oalo was a fervent human rights advocate, especially pertaining to the rights of the LGBTQI community in the Pacific.
She was a member of the Samoa Fa’afafine Association (SFA) and a passionate advocate for the acknowledgement of a third gender in the island country. Under her leadership, the SFA pushed for the recognition of the validity and rights of the fa’afafine community.
She was also a pioneer in articulating the links between human rights, exploitation of fa’afafines in Samoa and the Pacific, and the health, wellbeing and security of the LGBTQI community.
She was an inspiration, a visionary and her dedication to the pursuit of rights for her community is admirable and will be remembered.
Are there some red line topics we should avoid submitting?
The AWID Forum has always been a space that doesn’t shy away from much needed and difficult conversations. We welcome these submissions when the organizers can carefully hold a respectful and safer space for the participants.
Nadine was a role model to many for her work supporting women and the most vulnerable in her community. She was committed to helping the poor and homeless in particular.
Though her death was reported as an accident, the Ramaroson family, led by her father, André Ramaroson led an investigation that pointed to evidence that she had been murdered. She is reported to have died in a fatal accident occurred between Soanierano - Ivongo and Ste Marie - a story that has been refuted by her family.
She received numerous death threats for her bold political positions. Her case remains in court in Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar).
This page provides ideas and inspiration for how you can fund your participation at the 14th AWID International Forum.
As you plan the activity you would like to do at the Forum, please also consider how you will fund your participation. Typical Costs include: accommodation, travel, visa, forum registration fees, etc.
It is important to note that this Forum will have many ‘open spaces’ and moments for movements to learn and exchange, but fewer formal sessions. (See “Ways to describe the Forum in your fundraising” below for language to use in your outreach.)
Work with your current funders:
Reach out to your current donors first : Your best option is always a current funder that you have.
Make sure to do it in advance : We recommend contacting them by early 2020 at the latest. Many funders who support feminist organizations have some budget allocated for Forum travel. Others may be able to include it in renewal grants or through other travel funds.
If your group has funders, tell them that you want to attend the AWID Forum to learn, experience, exchange and network- even if your activity does not get selected for the final program. In order to be able to support your participation, your donors will need to know about it well in advance so tell them right away! (they are already deciding which funds they will distribute in 2020).
Seeking new funders:
If you do not currently have donor support or are not able to secure grants for Forum travel, consider reaching out to new donors.
Deadlines and requirements vary by funder, and a grant review process can take many months. If you’re considering applying for new grants, do so as soon as possible.
Creative inspiration:
Feminist movements have long gotten creative with funding our own activism. Here are some ideas that we have gathered to inspire alternative ways of fundraising:
Mobilize your community to support participation: fundraise with small contributions from members through community dinners, dance parties, and local shows, events and tours
Mobilize your networks by organizing giving circles and crowdsourcing using various online tools like gofundme, indiegogo, plumfund, or kickstarter
Cultivate local sources of income, including from individual donors and membership dues
Consider co-funding through strategic partnerships with other community and social justice groups.
For more inspiration, see AWID’s ongoing series on autonomous resourcing, including specific ideas for conference raising participation funds.
Access Fund:
AWID strives to make the Forum a truly global gathering with participation from diverse movements, regions and generations. To this end, AWID mobilizes resources for a limited Access Fund (AF) to assist Forum participants with the costs of attending the Forum.
AWID’s Access Fund will provide support to a limited number of Forum participants and session/activity facilitators. You can indicate in your application if you would like to apply to the AWID Access Fund. This is not guaranteed, and we strongly encourage you to seek alternative funding for your participation and travel to the Forum.
Even if you apply for the AWID Access Fund, we encourage you to continue to explore other options to fund your participation in the Forum. Access Fund decisions will be confirmed by the end of June 2020. Please remember that these resources are very limited, and we will be unable to support all applicants.
Ways to describe the Forum in your fundraising:
As you reach out to funders or your own networks, here is some sample messaging that may be helpful. Feel free to adapt it in whatever way is useful for you!
The AWID Forum is a co-created feminist movement space that energizes participants in their own activism, and strengthens connections with others across multiple rights and justice movements. Participants get to draw from wells of hope, energy and radical imagination, as well as deepen shared analysis, learning, and build cross-movement solidarity to develop more integrated agendas and advance joint strategies.
Our organization is seeking funds to attend the Forum in order to connect with other activists and movements from around the world, strengthen our strategies, and share our work. We are inspired by past participants, who have described the power of this global feminist gathering:
“Over four days … voices weaved together into a global perspective on the state of gender equality. And when I say global, I mean simultaneous translation into seven languages kind of global ....”
“It was reminding us that we are not alone. The Forum provided a means of translating collectivity into our movements. Whether across ideologies, identities or borders, our strength is in our vision and our support of one another.”
It is important to note that this Forum will have many ‘open spaces’ and moments for movements to learn and exchange, but fewer formal sessions. While many attendees will not be presenting in formal sessions, there will be invaluable space to learn, strategize, and experience feminist movements’ collective power in action.
Budget considerations:
When calculating your costs and how much you need to raise, it is important to factor in costs that may come up. Here’s an example of key items to consider:
Airfare
Forum registration fees (please note that even if you are granted Access Funds by AWID, you will have to cover your registration fee yourself)
Visa costs
Travel health insurance
Local travel to and from the airport (taxis or other transportation)
Layover costs, such as hotels and meals if your plane travel requires a long layover
Accommodation, including giving yourself a day to recover on either end if you have traveled far
Technology, including WiFi access or fees for international communication as needed during travel (AWID will provide WiFi during the Forum)
Materials costs for any items (visuals, reports, artwork!) you want to bring, share, or exchange at the Forum
Incidentals and/or per diems to cover food and other items that come up (all lunches and coffee/tea breaks, plus one dinner will be provided by AWID during Forum days)
Accessibility, such as any additional support that may be important to make your travel more comfortable, safe, and secure
We look forward to seeing you at the Forum!
The Forum is a collaborative process
The AWID Forum will now take place 11-14 January 2021 in Taipei .
It is more than a four-day convening. It is one more stop on a movement strengthening journey around Feminist Realities that has already begun and will continue well beyond the Forum dates.
Cynthia Cockburn was a feminist sociologist, writer, academic, photographer and peace activist.
She explored the gendered aspects of violence and conflict and made significant contributions to the peace movement through her exploration of the themes of masculinity and violence as well as her local and international activism.
Cynthia brought a feminist power analysis to militarisation and war, and was among the academics whose writings and analysis clearly demonstrated how gender-based violence played a key part in perpetuating war. Working closely with peace activists in countries experiencing conflict, her findings covered diverse contexts including Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel/Palestine, South Korea, Japan, Spain and the UK. She helped bring in her research and academic writings, an understanding that violence was experienced as a continuum of time and scale and perceived very differently when seen from a gendered lens.
In her words, “Gender helps us to see the continuity, the connection between instances of violence.”
Cynthia bridged her research with the activism she did locally and internationally with movements for demilitarisation, disarmament and peace. She helped start the Greenham Common women’s peace camp, which advocated for universal nuclear disarmament in Britain and was part of establishing the London chapter of Women in Black.
Over the decades, Cynthia organized and participated in local weekly vigils and the political choir Raised Voices, singing in the choir, and writing several of the lyrics to the songs that have made up its repertoire. She was also active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the European Forum of Socialist Feminists as well as in Women Against Fundamentalism.
“Cynthia shed feminist light, wove together feminist communities, sang songs of peace, listened, listened, listened, watched the birds – and stopped traffic. I’ll be forever and gratefully in her debt, the other ‘Cynthia’” – Cynthia Enloe
Cynthia was born in July 1934 and passed away in September 2019 at the age of 85.
CFA FAQ - Funding - Thai
การขอทุนสนับสนุนการเข้าร่วม
Our neighbourhood, our network, our strength
by Marta Plaza Fernández, Madrid, Spain (@gacela1980)
The feminist reality that I want to share is about weaving networks in which we uphold one another. Networks which come together in different ways, which emerge from our shared vulnerability, and which make all of us stronger.
The streets of Chamberí, my neighbourhood in Madrid, became much more of a home following the gatherings in the plazas organized by the citizens movement that originated in a rally on May 15, 2011. I think about how, during those years, we met each other and were able to associate faces, voices, smiles with so many neighbours who previously were only silhouettes without names or pasts, and who we passed by without seeing or hearing each other. I think about how we’ve become involved and dedicated; how we’ve woven a palpable, tangible community; how we’ve been advancing hand in hand towards building a new more inhabitable world, which we want and that we urgently need to create.
A group of activists and utopian neighbours, (in the best sense of the word utopian) – that moves us to action to do something real – that group for me was practically the first that reacted differently when I shared a part of my history and identity with them. With these women I shared my psychiatric diagnosis, my multiple hospital stays, the number of daily pills that accompanied me, my disability certificate, my difficulty in preserving that vital link that periodically disintegrates in my hands.
These neighbours, friends, comrades, links, loves –did not only not distance themselves from me once they got to know someone who many others had labelled as problematic, manipulator, egotistical – but became my principal network of affection and mutual support. They decided to navigate with me when the sea became agitated with storms. These people have given a different meaning to my days.
Building our feminist reality also encompasses carrying the “I believe you, sister” that we use when a friend has suffered a macho attack to the violence experienced by psychiatrized women at the hands of the very psychiatric system and institutions that are supposed to help us (and instead are often the new abuser who traumatizes and hurts us all over again). And this reality must include respect for our decisions, without taking away our agency and capacity to direct our own steps to one space or another; to listen to our narratives, desires, needs…without trying to impose others that are alien to us. It means not delegitimizing our discourse, not alluding to the label of our diagnosis, nor our madness.
With these transformation, each stay in the psychiatric institute did erase the ties that we had been able to build, but instead this network stayed by my side, its members took turns so that each day there would be no lull in calls, in visits, so that I could feel them as close as one can feel another person separated by locked doors (but unfortunately open for abuse) within the confines of the psychiatric ward. Through the warmth and kindness from my people I could rebuild that vital link that had once again been broken.
The even bigger leap happened when I was already aware of the numerous violent acts and abuse (where among other assaults, I spent days strapped to a bed, relieving myself where I lay), I decided that I would not go back to being interned.
This network of care, these women neighbours-friends-loves-comrades, they respected my refusal to return to the hospital and supported me through each crisis I’ve been through since then. Without being interned, without violence.
They took turns accompanying me when my link to life was so broken that I felt such a huge risk which I couldn’t handle on my own. They organized WhatsApp group check-ins. They coordinated care and responsibilities so that no one would feel overwhelmed - because when an individual feels overloaded, they make decisions based on fear and the need for control instead of prioritizing accompaniment and care.
That first crisis that we were able to surmount together in this way – without being admitted to the psychiatric institute, represented a dramatic change in my life. There were months when my life was at risk, of intense suffering and of so much fear for my people and for me. But we overcame it together, and all that I thought was that if we could get over that crisis, then we could also find ways to face all the difficulties and crises that may come.
These feminist realities that we’re building day by day keep expanding, growing and taking different forms. We’re learning together, we’re growing together. Distancing ourselves from a welfare mentality, one of the first lessons was that, in reality, there wouldn’t be anyone receiving care (because of a psychiatric label) or anyone helping, from the other side of the sanity/insanity line. We learnt – we’re learning – to move to a different key – that of mutual support, of providing care and being cared for, of caring for each other.
We’ve also explored the limits of self care and the strength of collectivizing care and redistributing it so it’s not a burden that paralyzes us; we learnt – and we keep learning today – about joy and enjoying care that is chosen.
Another recent learning is about how difficult it was to start integrating money as another component of mutual support that we all give and receive. It was hard for us to realize how internalized capitalism kept on reverberating in our relationship with money, and that even though no one expected any payment for the containers of lentils we cooked amongst us when eating and cooking were difficult tasks, our expectation regarding money was different. Phrases like “how much you have is how much you’re worth” become stuck inside of us without critically analyzing them. It’s easy to keep thinking that the money each one has is related to the effort made to earn it, and not due to other social conditioning distant from personal merit. In fact, within this well-established mutual support network – redistributing money based on needs without questioning – was still a remote reality for our day to day. That’s why this is something that we’ve recently started to work on and think through as a group.
We want to get closer to that anti-capitalist world where mutual support is the way that we have chosen to be in the world; and that entails deconstructing our personal and collective relationship with money and internalized capitalism.
In these feminist realities we also know that learning never stops, and that the road continues to be shaped as we travel upon it. There is still much to do to keep caring for ourselves, to keep expanding perspectives and to make ourselves more aware of the persistent power imbalances, of privileges that we hold and continue to exercise, without realizing the violence that they reproduce.
Though we’ve already travelled so far, we still have a long way to go to get closer to that new world that we hold in our hearts (and for some within our crazy little heads too). Racism, classism, adult-centrism, fat-phobia, and machismo that persists among our partners.
Among the pending lessons, we’ve needed for a long time already to build a liveable future in which feminism is really intersectional and in which we all have space, in which the realities and oppressions of other sisters are just as important as our own. We also need to move forward horizontally when we build collectively – getting rid of egos, of protagonisms, to live together and deal with the need for recognition in a different way. And to also keep making strides grounded in the awareness that the personal is always, always political.
How we relate to and link with each other cannot be relegated to the private domain, nor kept silent: other loves are possible, other connections and other families are necessary, and we are also inventing them as we go.
This new world which we want to create, and that we need to believe in – is this kind world – in which we can love, and feel pride in ourselves – and in which all worlds will fit. We’ll keep at it.
Looking at activists and feminists as healers and nourishers of the world, in the midst of battling growing right wing presence, white supremacy and climate change. This piece highlights how our feminist reality puts kindness, solidarity, and empathy into action by showing up and challenging the status quo to liberate us all.
Fadila M. was a Soulaliyate tribal activist from Azrou, the Ifrane region of Morocco. She fought against a specific form of land discrimination directed against tribal women.
As part of the Soulaliyate Women’s Land-Use Rights Movement, she worked towards overhauling the framework legislation relating to the management of community property through the 2019 adoption of three projects of laws guaranteeing the equality of women and men.
According to the customary laws in force, women had no right to benefit from the land, especially those who were single, widowed or divorced. The rights to collective land in Morocco were transmitted traditionally between male members of a family of over 16 years of age. Since 2007, Fadila M. had been part of the women’s movement, the first grassroots nationwide mobilization for land rights. Some of the achievements included that in 2012 for the first time Soulaliyate women were able to register on the lists of beneficiaries and to benefit from compensation relating to land cession. The movement also managed to get the 1919 dahir (Moroccan King's decree) amended to guarantee women the right to equality.
Fadila M. died on 27 September 2018. The circumstances of her death are unclear. She was part of a protest march connected to the issue of collective land and while authorities reported her death as being accidental, and her having a cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, the local section of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) pointed out that Fadila was suffocated by a member of the police force using a Moroccan flag. Her family requested investigation but the results of the autopsy were not known.
Please note: As there was no photograph/image of Fadila M. available to us, the artwork (instead of a portrait) aims to represent what she fought and worked for; land and rights to live and have access to that land and what grows on it.
هل هناك منهجية مفضلة للجلسات؟
تقترح الدعوة للتقدم بالمقترحات عددًا من التنسيقات والمنهجيات المقترحة. كن/ كوني مبدعًا/ة وتأكد/ي من قراءة قسم "ما تحتاج/ين إلى معرفته".
