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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.
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.
Hello again, and again, and again. I have known and loved you my entire adult life, since I first met you meaningfully, after graduating from university. I’d seen you one time before then. That was you appearing as Betty Friedan on a local TV talk show in the US Midwest, in the late-1960s. At the time, Mrs. Wells, my other mother, and I commented on what wild, far-fetched ideas this woman was trying to convince us about. Decade after decade since then I have fallen more deeply in love with you, Beloved, and understand and witness your political and theoretical brilliance, ethical and moral authority, creativity, joy, and love, above all. Nearly 60 years later, I know we are partners forever.
The early years of our acquaintanceship was ok. I was quite self-involved--figuring racial, gender, and sexual identity; getting clear on my core politics, values, and ethics; completing my formal education--and you provided numerous settings, intellectual drop-in centers, and comforting holding environments where and through which I was able to craft the young-adult building blocks of the feminist and human being whom I would become.
The predominantly white women’s movement of Cambridge and Boston, including Daughters of Bilitis, was my starting place. That suited me at the time but soon realized I desired something more. Poof! Like magic (serendipity), I connected with a small group of radical, anti-imperialist, Black, socialist lesbian women and we soon became the Combahee River Collective.
That early Combahee experience, combined with critical life lessons and particular African-American/Korean immigrant racial politics of early-1990s in the US, prepared me for the journey that has led me to identify and work as a transnational feminist to address militarism and to dedicate myself to imagining other worlds where all living beings will thrive.
The next two critical women’s-movement moments were decades after Combahee years but deeply linked. First was meeting and being invited into the Korean feminist movement organizing against US military bases and supporting the “kijichon women” the Korean women whose lives, including for some, their mixed-race children, revolved around servicing US military personnel in numerous ways in villages and towns adjacent to the bases. Korean Beloved Feminists, especially Kim Yon-Ja and Ahn Il-Soon, the first sisters I met and traveled with, made me see and understand the critical importance of nation as an analytical and organizing principle. The “capstone” was living, working in occupied Palestine. The late Maha Abu-Dayyeh introduced me to the Palestinian women’s movement, with a profound comment, “you can leave Palestine but Palestine will never leave you.” So true. And, all my work and experiences across many borders brought me to AWID--my second home.
As you know, Beloved, being with you has not been easy or simple. Indeed, you are demanding, consistently riddled with contradictions, and sometimes even hurtful. Nonetheless, you continue to grow and develop, as you are supporting my political, emotional, and spiritual growth and development. I guess we are growing each other--a very profound process to which I will dedicate the rest of my time in my current form.
The through-line of being with you all these decades is this:
Feminists Collectively Engaging the Heads, Hearts, Hands, and Spirits to transform our worlds
So much love, Feminist Movements!
Your Margo
AKA DJ MOR Love and Joy
Wellfleet Massachusetts USA
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Last updated: May 2019
We are in communication with regional, thematic and funder convenings planned for 2023-2024, to ensure flow of conversations and connections. If you are organizing an event and would like to make a connection to the AWID Forum, please get in touch with us!
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“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou
The International AWID Forum is both a global community event and a space of radical personal transformation. A one-of-a-kind convening, the Forum brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements, in all our diversity and humanity, to connect, heal and thrive. The Forum is a place where Global South feminists and historically marginalized communities take center stage, strategizing with each other and social justice movements, in order to shift power, make strategic alliances, and usher in a different, better world. When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand in 2024. Come dance, sing, dream and rise with us.
We all can dance
by Mechthild Möhring (aka serialmel)
How I punt myself at the narrow hard knitting I once retrieved. I'm dancing in the kitchen when I'm alone. Gracile and powerful. When I'm in company I'm clumsy. My body scandalizes, scandalizes the laws of look I feel, scandalizes the words which banished me. "Of course she can dance, it's in her blood as a Black person." "If she is able to dance nicely she is good in bed" they whisper, they murmur, no - they say it openly into my face. They smirk and rub themselves against me and let me move back. I stumble and fall. My feet reject their duty. Bearish I get out of breath. Smiling I place myself out of events and notice how my face freezes into a mask.
Translated into English by Tsepo Bollwinkel
Original in German
Tanzen können wir alle
Von Mechthild Möhring (aka serialmel)
Wie ich mich stosse an den engen, harten Maschen, in die ich mich einst zurückgezogen habe. Ich tanze in der Küche, wenn ich allein bin. Grazil und kraftvoll. Wenn ich in Gesellschaft bin, bin ich unbeholfen. Mein Körper eckt an, an die Gesetze des Blicks, den ich spüre, an die Worte, die mich bannten. „Natürlich kann sie tanzen, als Schwarze hat sie das im Blut.“ „Wenn sie gut tanzen kann, dann ist sie auch gut im Bett“ flüstern sie, raunen sie, nein, sie sagen es mir laut ins Gesicht. Sie grinsen und reiben sich an mir und lassen mich zurückweichen. Ich stolpere und falle. Meine Füsse verweigern ihren Dienst. Tollpatschig gerate ich ausser Atem. Lächelnd setze ich mich an den Rand des Geschehens und bemerke, wie mein Gesicht zur Maske erstarrt.
นับเป็นครั้งแรกที่เวทีประชุม AWID จะเสนอรูปแบบการมีส่วนร่วม 3 รูปแบบ
ผู้เข้าร่วมสามารถเดินทางเข้าร่วมด้วยตัวเอง ที่กรุงเทพฯ ประเทศไทย ซึ่งเราจะตั้งหน้าตั้งตาคอยท่านอยู่!
Laura was a leading activist and lawyer who campaigned fearlessly for the decriminalisation of sex work in Ireland.
She is remembered as “a freedom fighter for sex workers, a feminist, a mother to a daughter and a needed friend to many.”
Laura advocated for individuals in the sex industry to be recognised as workers deserving of rights. She advanced demands for decriminalisation, including initiating a judicial review at Belfast’s high court in respect of the provisions criminalising the purchase of sex. Laura stated that her intention was to bring the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Ottilie was a Namibian feminist activist, educator and politician.
Ottilie was one of the founders of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO), the Yu Chi Chan Club (an armed revolutionary group); and the South West African National Liberation Front (SWANLIF). She was also a founder of the Namibian Women’s Association and Girl Child Project.
Throughout her life, Ottilie argued for the right to argue, think, contest, and demand. She mobilized women, organized students and teachers and criticized other comrades for their elitism and their corruption.
Ottilie worked ferociously to dismantle patriarchy, and to create a concrete transformative, liberatory, feminist participatory democracy.
Ottilie often said: “I will rest the day I die.”
Please refer to the Call for Activities for this information, including the section “What you need to know”.
Carmen had a long career advocating for women’s rights both in NGOs and within the United Nations (UN) system.
She taught courses in several Spanish and Latin American universities, and published numerous articles and reports on women, gender and peace in developing countries.
Her writing and critical reflections have impacted a whole generation of young women. In her last years, she was responsible for the Gender Practice Area in the Regional Center of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Latin America, from where she supported very valuable initiatives in favour of gender equality and women's human rights.
2-5 ديسمبر 2024، بانكوك، تايلاند! سنجتمع في مركز الملكة سيريكيت الوطني للمؤتمرات (QSNCC) وكذلك افتراضيا عبر
Bessy was also a member of Arcoíris, an organisation which supports the LGBTI+ community. She was also a focal point person for the Right Here, Right Now (Derechos aquí y Ahora) Platform of Honduras, and advocated strongly for full citizenship of trans people, and the passing of a gender identity law that would allow trans people to change their gender identity legally.
"Since the beginning of the year [2019] the trans community has been suffering a series of attacks, for defending, for demanding rights." - Rihanna Ferrera (Bessy’s sister)
Bessy was a sex worker, and in early July 2019, was shot to death by two men while working in the streets of Comayagüela. Her assailants were subsequently arrested.
Bessy is one of many LGBTI+ rights defenders in Honduras, who were murdered because of their identities and work. Other companeras include: Cynthia Nicole, Angy Ferreira, Estefania "Nia" Zuniga, Gloria Carolina Hernandez Vasquez, Paola Barraza, Violeta Rivas, and Sherly Montoya.
Bessy’s case is emblematic of injustice and a much larger problem of the systematic violence the LGBTI+ community faces in Honduras as the state fails to guarantee rights offer and fails to offer protection. This has created a culture of impunity.
Despite the risks LGBTI+ defenders in Honduras face, they continue their work to challenge and resist violence, and fight stigma and discrimination on a daily basis.
“If I die, let it be for something good not for something futile. I don’t want to die running away, being a coward. If I die, I want people to say that I died fighting for what is mine.” - member of Arcoíris
لا تقدم جمعية حقوق المرأة في التنمية خصومات جماعية، ولكننا نقدم خصومات التسجيل للأعضاء/ العضوات. (انقر هنا لمعرفة المزيد عن كيفية الانضمام)
Doris Valenzuela Angulo was an Afro-descendant social activist, leader and human rights defender from Buenaventura, Colombia. She was part of Communities Building Peace in the Territories (CONPAZ), a national network of organizations in communities affected by armed conflict that advocate for non-violence and socio-environmental justice.
Doris defied constant paramilitary violence and pressures from mega projects to displace her community and state collusion. Faced with one of the most difficult contexts in her country, she played a leadership role in an unprecedented initiative of non-violent resistance called Puente Nayero Humanitarian Space, an urban place for community cohesion, safety, creativity and collective action.
This unique non-violent struggle of the families that belonged to Puente Nayero Humanitarian Space, attracted attention and support from both local and international agencies. By September 2014, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had granted precautionary protection measures to the community ordering the Colombian State to adopt necessary measures to preserve their lives and personal integrity. However, the threats and violence from the paramilitaries continued. Doris focused her energies on preventing forced recruitment of children and young people by the neo-paramilitaires, continuing on despite the murder of her son Cristian Dainer Aragón Valenzuela in July 2015. Doris also became a target, continuously receiving threats for her activism and the work she did.
The continued aggression and threats against her life forced Doris to leave Colombia. She was residing in Spain from February 2017 to February 2018, as part of the Amnesty International temporary protection program for human rights defenders at risk. In April 2018, Doris was murdered in Murcia, Spain by her ex-partner. She was only 39 years old.
"Doris, spending a whole year with you has taught us how a person can have the ability to transform and generate hope in the face of deeply negative and devastating events during your life...We continue with our commitment in the defense of all human rights. Your courage and your light will always guide us.” - Montserrat Román, Amnesty International Grupo La Palma
"..You knew it. You always knew. And in spite of everything you stood firm against so many injustices, so many miseries, so much persecution. You stood up, haughty and fierce, against those who wanted to make you again abandon your hopes, humble yourself and surrender. Standing up you cried out for your freedom and ours that was yours. Nothing and no one paralyzed your efforts to change the world and make it more generous and livable. You, live among us, more alive today than ever among us despite death. Always live by your gestures, your courage, your greatness when crying for a promised land that you came to invoke with each of your cries for all the deserts you inhabited. You. Always alive. Doris Valenzuela Angulo.
They are only words. I know. I know it too. But the words unite us, protect us, give us strength and encouragement to continue walking towards the light that you defended so much…”
يرجى الرجوع إلى فتح باب التقديم للحصول على هذه المعلومات، بما في ذلك قسم "ما تحتاج/ين إلى معرفته".
