Resourcing Feminist Movements

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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.
Our Actions
Recognizing the richness of our movements and responding to the current moment, we:
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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.
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Build knowledge: We explore, exchange, and strengthen knowledge about how movements are attracting, organizing, and using the resources they need to accomplish meaningful change.
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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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Margarita Salas Guzmán
Margarita is a feminist and LGBTIQA activist from Latin America; her passion is social transformation and collective wellbeing. She holds degrees in Psychology, Communications and Public Administration, as well as certificates in Public Policy, Leadership, Management & Decision Making. In her professional capacity, Margarita has had extensive experience with grassroots organizations, national and regional NGOs, universities and the public sector, developing facilitation, capacity building, political advocacy, communications & policy assessment.
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“It’s the indigenous knowledge and the practices that have always supported food sovereignty and this knowhow is in the hands of the women … Ecofeminism for me is the respect for all that we have around us.”
Mariama Sonko
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Patience Chabururuka
Patience is a global human resources professional with over a decade of experience in human resources (HR) management in the not-for-profit sector. Patience previously worked at Mercy Corps as the Global HR Officer for Africa supporting the full employee life cycle for expatriates in the Eastern and Southern African region and provided HR technical guidance to Human Resources leaders in country offices within the African region. Before joining the global people team, she was the Country Human Resources and Safeguarding Focal Point, she was part of the senior management team leading on all human resources and safeguarding matters. Prior to Mercy Corps she led the HR and Operations department at SNV Netherlands Development Organization and was a member of the country management team. She also has HR Consultancy experience which she gained while she was still studying for her BSc Honors degree in Human Resource Management. She has a passion for HR, loves working with people and she takes wellbeing and safeguarding as her core values and in her professional work. As someone who loves sports, you can also find Patience at the basketball court, the tennis court or on the soccer field.
Snippet FEA Financial Precarities (EN)

is constant
Dr. Afaf Marei
Nana Abuelsoud
Nana is a feminist organizer and a reproductive rights and population policy researcher based in Egypt. She is a member of Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ), a member of the Advisory Board of the A Project in Lebanon, and a member of the Community Committee of Mama Cash. Nana holds an MSc in Public Health from KIT Institute and Vrije University in Amsterdam. In her work, she follows and contextualizes national population policies while building evidence that addresses modern eugenics, regressive international aid, and authoritarianism. Previously, she was part of the Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and Ikhtyar Feminist Collective in Cairo.
Snippet FEA collaborator and allies Photo 3 (EN)

Yayori Matsui
Do you produce an annual report?
Yes, we do produce annual reports.
All our annual reports are accessible online.
Snippet FEA Sopo Japaridze Quote (EN)
"We know everything is against us and there is very little chance to change that. But we believe in intervention and I do think we have a chance and should use it. That’s why we're doing everything we're doing. We're willing to push for things that are unheard of."
Sopo Japaridze to OpenDemocracy
Photo @სოლიდარობის ქსელი / Solidarity Network
2008: The Doha International Conference takes place with limited achievements
Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, Doha, Qatar
- The Doha conference aimed to review the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus. The conference revisited all six areas of financing for development but little substantive progress was achieved.
- While the outcome of Doha went beyond Monterrey on gender equality, it did not go far enough. A statement by the WWG on FfD highlighted that the commitments to gender equality in the Doha Declaration would only be meaningful if the systemic issues that underpin poverty and the unequal distribution of power and resources in the global political economy were decisively addressed.
- In addition to the main Doha conference, during their parallel forum the Civil Society under the Doha NGO Group (DNG) for Financing for Development demanded global economic structural changes, and policies that put peoples´ rights first and respect and promote human rights.
Snippet FEA Linda Porn Bio (EN)
Linda Porn is yet another heroine of feminist union organizing and sex worker activism nationally (in Spain) and transnationally.
Originally from Mexico, she has been living in Spain since the 2000s. She is a sex worker, an activist, a single mother and a multidisciplinary artist. Drawing from these different identities, she uses performance, video art and theater to vizibilize struggles at the intersections of transfeminism, sex work, migration, colonialism and motherhood.
She combines art and sex work while caring for her daughter as a single mother.
Linda also belongs to sex workers collectives that fight for their rights, such as the OTRAS union and CATS Murcia. She also co-founded the group 'Madrecitas' - that visibilises and denounces racist institutional violence against migrant families. Violence to which she and her daughter were subjected as a sex worker and migrant single mother.
You can follow her art work here.
Shifa Gardi
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What is the 14th AWID Forum theme?
The 14th Forum theme is “Feminist Realities: our power in action”.
We understand Feminist Realities as the different ways of existing and being that show us what is possible, despite dominant power systems, and in defiance and resistance to them. We understand these feminist realities as reclamations and embodiments of hope and power, and as multi-dimentional, dynamic and rooted in specific contexts and historical moments.
Read more about Feminist Realities
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Prudence Nobantu Mabele
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Where and when will the next AWID Forum take place?
The 14th AWID International Forum will take place 20-23 September 2021 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Snippet Discover Forum Stories (EN)

Feminist movements have changed and adapted tremendously since we last convened in this way - so to remember why AWID Forums matter, we asked activists from around the world to reflect on and share their stories, impressions and memories. This is what we learned.