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.

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CFA 2023 - Forum Theme - EN

Rising Together: Connect, Heal, Thrive

The Forum theme––Rising Together––is an invitation to engage with our whole selves, to connect with each other in focused, caring and brave ways, so that we can feel the heartbeat of global movements and rise together to meet the challenges of these times.

Feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements around the world are at a critical juncture, facing a powerful backlash on previously-won rights and freedoms. Recent years have brought the rapid rise of authoritarianisms, the violent repression of civil society and criminalization of women and gender-diverse human rights defenders, escalating war and conflict in many parts of our world, the continued perpetuation of economic injustices, and the intersecting health, ecological and climate crises.

Our movements are reeling and, at the same time, seeking to build and maintain the strength and fortitude required for the work ahead. We can't do this work alone, in our silos. Connection and healing are essential to transforming persistent power imbalances and fault lines within our own movements. We must work and strategize in interconnected ways, so that we can thrive together. The AWID Forum fosters that vital ingredient of interconnectedness in the staying power, growth and transformative influence of feminist organizing globally.

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Between Two Worlds: The Double Consciousness of Women in The Gambia

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CFA 2023 - Online and Hybrid - thai

 ใหม่

การประชุมออนไลน์และแบบผสมผสานรูปแบบ

ผู้เข้าร่วมประชุมออนไลน์สามารถดำเนินรายการในโปรแกรมต่างๆ   เชื่อมต่อและสนทนากับผู้อื่น   และสัมผัสประสบการณ์ความคิดสร้างสรรค์ ศิลปะ และการเฉลิมฉลองของเวที AWID ได้โดยตรง ผู้เข้าร่วม         ที่เชื่อมต่อออนไลน์จะได้พบกับกับโปรแกรมที่เข้มข้นและหลากหลาย ตั้งแต่การประชุมเชิงปฏิบัติการ การอภิปราย  ไปจนถึงโปรแกรมกิจกรรมเยียวยาและการแสดงดนตรี  โดยที่กิจกรรมบางอย่างจะเน้น การเชื่อมต่อระหว่างผู้เข้าร่วมออนไลน์ด้วยกัน       ในขณะที่กิจกรรมอื่นๆจะเป็นการเชื่อมต่อแบบผสมผสาน  เพื่อการมีปฏิสัมพันธ์กันระหว่างผู้เข้าร่วมออนไลน์และผู้ที่อยู่กรุงเทพฯ

OURS 2021 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Advancing Feminist Agendas: Key Progressions on Gender and Sexuality

While fundamentalisms, fascisms and other systems of oppression shapeshift and find new tactics and strategies to consolidate power and influence, feminist movements continue to persevere and celebrate gains nationally and in regional and international spaces.

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Olivia Arévalo Lomas

Olivia was the spiritual leader of the Shipibo Konibo indigenous peoples.

A wise Indigenous woman and grandmother, she was known for cultivating traditional medicine and the sacred songs of her people (Íkaros). Olivia Arevalo was an active defender of the cultural and environmental rights of her people. Olivia’s murder occurred in a context of territorial conflict between the Shipibo community and companies that desire to take over their land to cultivate palm oil.

Members of her community have said: “Her death is an aggression against the entire Shipibo community. She was the living memory of her people”.

 


 

Olivia Arévalo Lomas, Peru

CFA 2023 - Submit Button - thai

Crear | Résister | Transform: A Walkthrough of the Festival! | Content Snippet EN

As heteropatriarchal capitalism continues to force us into consumerism and compliance, we are finding that our struggles are being siloed and separated by physical as well as virtual borders.

And with the additional challenges of a global pandemic to overcome, this divide-and-conquer strategy has been favorable for the proliferation of exploitation across many areas.

Yet, From September 1 to September 30, 2021, Crear | Résister | Transform: a festival for feminist movements! took us on a journey of what it means to embody our realities in virtual spaces. At the festival, feminist activists from across the world came together, not only to share experiences of hard-won freedoms, resistances, and cross-borders solidarities, but to articulate what a transnational form of togetherness could look like. 

It is this togetherness that has the potential to defy borders, weaving a vision for a future that is transformative because it is abolitionist and anti-capitalist. Spread out over a month, across digital infrastructures that we occupied with our queerness, our resistance, and our imaginaires, the festival showed a way to deviate from the systems that make us complicit in the oppression of others and ourselves. 

Though Audre Lorde taught us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, Sara Ahmed showed us that we can misuse them. Because we had to make space for assembly, in spite of all the other demands on our time, it became possible to imagine a disruption to the reality of heteropatriarchal capitalism.

Now, if we understand assembly as a form of pleasure, then it becomes possible to make the link between transgressive pleasure and transnational/transdigital resistance. Between the kinds of pleasure that challenges borders on the one hand, and queerness, campiness, land and indigenous struggle, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonial organizing on the other. 

This issue attempted to capture a sense of how the festival’s exercise in assembly took on multiple shapes and imaginations. Beyond direct collaborations with some of its speakers and dreamers, we brought on a plethora of other voices from the Global South to be in conversation with many of its themes and subjects. Below is a map of some of the festival’s panels that most inspired us.

Madiha El Safty

Madiha was a prominent Professor of Sociology who actively engaged with civil society as an advocate for women’s rights in the Arab region.

She chaired the Alliance for Arab Women and was a member of the Committee on Civil Society and the Committee on the Development of Minia Governorate with the National Council for Women. She produced numerous papers that shed light on, and analyzed, gender inequalities and discrimination against women.

She is remembered fondly by colleagues, students and friends.


 

Madiha El Safty, Egypt

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.

#9 - Sexting like a feminist Tweets Snippet EN

Always good to establish ground rules.

Leave your biases, preconception, and your clothes at the door!

Selena “Rocky” Malone

Rocky showed inspirational leadership and direction in working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Brotherboy and Sistergirl (LGBTIQBBSG) youth at risk.

Rocky started her career with the Queensland Police Service as a Police Liaison Officer. Making a difference was important to her. She led an impressive career working with young LGBTIQBBSG people as the Manager of Open Doors Youth Service.

Rocky worked through complex situations with clients relating specifically to gender and sexual identity. She was a natural in this line of work - a strong community leader, a quiet achiever, a loyal friend, a compassionate nurturer, and a change maker. Rocky was a founding member of IndigiLez Leadership and Support Group.

In 2016 at the Supreme Court in Brisbane, Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby mentioned Rocky by name when praising the work of the LGBTI Legal Service over the years. Rocky fought extremely hard for the human rights of the LGBTIQBBSG community, pushed boundaries and created change in a respectful, loving way.  


 

Rocky Malone, Australia

ทำไมจึงเป็นกรุงเทพ

ฟอรัมแต่ละครั้งถูกจัดขึ้นในภูมิภาคต่างๆทั่วโลก และครั้งนี้ AWID ฟอรัมกลับมาจัดที่เอีเชียอีกครั้ง! เราได้ผ่านการไปเยี่ยมเยือนประเทศต่างๆในเอเชียเพื่อหารือกับขบวนการเฟมินิสต์เพื่อประเมินรายละเอียดด้านโลจิสติกส์ การเข้าถึงง่าย ความปลอดภัย วีซ่า และความพร้อมด้านอื่นๆ โดยคณะกรรมการ AWID ของเรา อนุมัติให้จัดที่กรุงเทพอย่างกระตือรือร้นในฐานะทางเลือกที่ดีที่สุด เราตื่นเต้นที่ได้กลับมากรุงเทพที่ที่เราเคยได้จัด AWID ฟอรัมในปีพ.ศ. 2548

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Illustration of film reel

Paula Andrea Rosero Ordóñez

“[She] was a person who was characterized by her hard work in favor of the defense of human rights and the construction of peace in Nariño, especially in the municipality of Samaniego-Nariño.”
- Jorge Luis Congacha Yunda for Página10

Paula Andrea Rosero Ordóñez was a trial lawyer in the office of the Public Ministry in Samaniego, Nariño, the main agency defending citizens’ rights in Colombia.

She focused on civil and political rights, issues of impunity and justice, and contributed to uncovering the abuse of power, including corruption. She also participated in peacebuilding projects in her hometown Samaniego, such as the Municipal Peace Council and the Municipal Women’s Board. 

Paula received death threats after exposing the irregular handling of resources and complaining about acts of corruption at the Lorencita Villegas Hospital in the Nariñense municipality. She was murdered on 20 May 2019, when two men approached and shot her at close range. 

CFA FAQ - Funding - Thai

การขอทุนสนับสนุนการเข้าร่วม

El Nemrah | Snippet AR

El Nemrah Avatar

النمرة.

Juli Dugdale

Juli Dugdale was an Australian feminist who practiced intergenerational leadership rooted in principles of feminism, inclusion and equality. She was a leader, peer and mentor for many women and especially young women around the world. 

Juli was a dedicated staff member, volunteer and fervent advocate for young women’s leadership with the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) movement for over 30 years.

She offered a strong link between the Australian movement and the World YWCA Office. Her trust in the leadership capacity of young women led to a multi-year partnership with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the creation of the Rise Up manual, a global guide for young women’s transformative leadership, launched in 2018.

Juli passed away in Geneva on 12 August 2019.


Tributes:

“For those who got to work with Juli, it was a privilege. For those who didn’t, be assured that her legacy continues in the work we do every day and in the mission of the YWCA movement.” - YWCA Australia

“Juli Dugdale will forever hold a deep place in many people's hearts in the YWCA movement, especially here in Aotearoa and across the Pacific. Juli had a special relationship with the Pacific and was an incredible supporter of the young women there. She was humble, gracious, loving, caring, dedicated, passionate and had a generous heart. She embodied the YWCA's vision of 'transformative leadership' with extraordinary vision and foresight, and helped empower generations of young women leaders around the world.” - YWCA New Zealand