Rocio Gonzalez Trapaga
Young Feminist Activism
Organizing creatively, facing an increasing threat
Young feminist activists play a critical role in women’s rights organizations and movements worldwide by bringing up new issues that feminists face today. Their strength, creativity and adaptability are vital to the sustainability of feminist organizing.
At the same time, they face specific impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on young women human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes more difficult their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements.
A multigenerational approach
AWID’s young feminist activism program was created to make sure the voices of young women are heard and reflected in feminist discourse. We want to ensure that young feminists have better access to funding, capacity-building opportunities and international processes. In addition to supporting young feminists directly, we are also working with women’s rights activists of all ages on practical models and strategies for effective multigenerational organizing.
Our Actions
We want young feminist activists to play a role in decision-making affecting their rights by:
-
Fostering community and sharing information through the Young Feminist Wire. Recognizing the importance of online media for the work of young feminists, our team launched the Young Feminist Wire in May 2010 to share information, build capacity through online webinars and e-discussions, and encourage community building.
-
Researching and building knowledge on young feminist activism, to increase the visibility and impact of young feminist activism within and across women’s rights movements and other key actors such as donors.
-
Promoting more effective multigenerational organizing, exploring better ways to work together.
-
Supporting young feminists to engage in global development processes such as those within the United Nations
-
Collaboration across all of AWID’s priority areas, including the Forum, to ensure young feminists’ key contributions, perspectives, needs and activism are reflected in debates, policies and programs affecting them.
Related Content
Snippet - CSW69 - OURs & friends - EN
OURs & friends at the Feminist Solidarity Space
✉️ By invitation only
📅 Tuesday, March 11, 2025
🕒 2.00-4.00pm EST
🏢 Chef's Kitchen Loft with Terrace, 216 East 45th St 13th Floor New York
Organizer: Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) Consortium
Snippet - GII Intro (EN)
Gender Impact Investing & The Rise of False Solutions:
An Analysis for Feminist Movements
Gender Impact Investing (GII) is now trending as a solution to gender inequality. Yet, as our report indicates, it is actually part of the problem. Public and private institutions marketing GII equate it with promotion of gender equality and with increased resources for women and girls.
Neither claim is evidence-based.
Rather, GII is another expression of subjecting our lives and societies to the same financial logic that has shaped, and continues shaping, the profound inequalities in our world.
With this report, AWID offers the readers - feminists, gender justice advocates and stakeholders in gender impact investing - a critical analysis and substantiated evidence to understand GII, its narratives, and economic and political implications for feminist movements.
Gloria Chicaiza
Activiste sociale et de l’environnement équatorienne, Gloria Chicaiza était une fervente défenseuse du droit à la terre et à l’eau. Elle s’est opposée au statu quo en luttant contre un modèle de développement fondé sur l’extraction et a oeuvré sans relâche pour la justice écologique et les droits des communautés affectées par l’exploitation minière.
Dans divers endroits de l’Équateur, Gloria a participé à des actions de résistance en faveur de la protection de l’écosystème. Avec passion et dévouement, Goria a apporté son soutien au mouvement autochtone et environnemental, à ces communautés et organisations qui s’opposent aux projets miniers et protègent leurs territoires et leurs projets de vie collectifs. Elle est intervenue au sein de forums locaux et internationaux contre la criminalisation des dissident·e·s et des résistant·e·s, contre les pressions et la violence exercées à l’encontre des activistes communautaires, en particulier des femmes défenseuses des droits humains, et pour soutenir les efforts déployés par les communautés en faveur de la souveraineté alimentaire et de la durabilité.
Elle était la coordonnatrice de la justice minière à Acción Ecológica, membre du Réseau latino-américain des femmes défenseuses des droits sociaux et environnementaux, et membre du conseil d'administration de l'Observatoire latino-américain des conflits miniers.
En octobre 2010, Gloria a été accusée par la société minière Curimining/Salazar Resources S.A. (dont le siège est à Vancouver, au Canada) d’avoir commandité un acte de terrorisme, de sabotage et d’association illégale dans le but de commettre un crime. Acción Ecológica a estimé qu’il s’agissait là de “représailles pour son travail de dénonciation concernant l’impact des activités minières dans le pays”.
En 2015, Gloria a facilité la coordination d’une délégation, composée de 25 femmes autochtones d’Amérique latine, affectée au Dialogue sur le changement climatique de la COP 20 des Nations Unies.
Gloria est décédée le 28 décembre 2019 des suites de complications liées à une transplantation pulmonaire. On se souvient d’elle pour ses actes de résistance et son travail acharné.
"Le moyen le plus rapide de parvenir à la durabilité reste encore la résistance.” - Gloria Chicaiza (2010 interview)
Hommages :
“Pour GLORIA. GLORIA Eau. GLORIA Terre. GLORIA Mère. GLORIA Révolution. GLORIA Soeur. GLORIA Ciel. GLORIAmie. GLORIAstrale. Merci de nous avoir entrelacé·e·s.” -Liliana Gutierrez
“Merci Glorita, d’avoir nourri l'espoir, d’avoir préservé la solidité de la structure, d’avoir tissé des liens avec la communauté, pour les mains unies, pour la solidarité, merci Glorita de t’être tenue à nos côtés dans les moments les plus difficiles. Merci de nous avoir appris que tout au long de la vie, personne ne se fatigue.” (Chakana News)
“Gloria Chicaiza appréciait ne pas sortir du lot et s’y épanouissait. Et aussi humble qu'elle fût, elle avait une capacité inouïe à mener et garder un rythme régulier et étourdissant, un pouls de vie qui guidait, mobilisait et inspirait les communautés et les réseaux dans la protection de la Terre Mère. Elle a dénoncé toutes les formes de violence contre les “cuerpos-territorios” (les corps comme territoires). Elle soutenait le “buen vivir" (“bien vivre”). - Gabriela Jiménez, coordonnatrice des partenariats en Amérique latine, KAIROS
“Merci Gloria Chicaiza, nous sommes sûr·e·s que depuis l’infini, tu continueras à soutenir notre combat. Toi qui as continué de te battre en dépit de ta santé défaillante. Tu continueras de vivre dans les forêts et les eaux que tu as défendues avec tant de courage. Tu vivras dans nos coeurs.” - La communauté d’Intag en Équateur
FRMag - Armenians
Arménien·ne·s, le féminisme est notre passé et notre avenir
par Sophia Armen
Que cela vous plaise ou non, les ungerhouis font partie intégrante de nos histoires de résistance et elles ne disparaîtront pas de sitôt. (...)
Suscríbete para recibir nuestras noticias
Safia Ahmed-Jan
Snippet - CSW69 On anti-rights resistance - ES
Sobre la resistencia contra las fuerzas antiderechos
- Nota de prensa | CSW69: One Step Forward, Multiple Steps Back— The Resolve for Gender Equality Continues! Download here (en inglés)
- Derechos en riesgo: Tiempo de actuar. Informe de tendencias de OURs
- Biblioteca de recursos de Derechos en riesgo
- Discursos sobre “ideología de género”: Una amenaza a los derechos humanos
- Feministas en la primera línea de defensa de los derechos humanos y la democracia: ¿cómo pueden los donantes lograr un impacto?
Snippet Stories of Change Full - Download (FR)
Aïssata Kane
Aïssata Kane, also fondly known as “Yaye Kadia” (Mother Kadia), was a feminist with a lifelong committment in advocating for African and especially Mauritanian women’s rights.
In her career as a politician, she was appointed Minister of Family Protection and Social Affairs in 1975, the first time a woman held such a position and in which Aïssata fervently worked to improve the status of women in her country.
This work included advancing girls’ and women’s education, fighting against the practice of force-feeding of young women, lobbying for an inclusion of a marital rights provision, and advocating for a female representation quota to be created in the Parliament.
“[Aïssata] realized all her passions with humility, courage and determination. She didn’t want to disturb anyone by her fight on all these fronts at the same time.” Ball Halimata Dem, Aïssata’s niece
She founded the National Union of Women of Mauritania (UNFM), co-creating and publishing Marienou for them, a magazine dedicated to the emancipation of Mauritanian women. Aïssata also directed several sub-regional and local organizations, including as the President of the International Association of Francophone Women (AIFF) and as a resolute ecologist, she was President of the Association for the Protection of the Environment in Mauritania (APEM).
In 2018 she received the Pioneer Woman Award. It honors her work in advancing Mauritania’s women’s status and recognizes her strong leadership and sense of innovation.
Aïssata passed away on 10 August 2019.
FRMag - Ghosts Of Girlhood
Ghosts Of Girlhood
by Akua Antiwiwaa
There is an old, hazy picture laying in front of me. In it I am dressed in all white, from the pearl beads fastened into my hair and tucked against my ears, to the ones that trail loosely around my tiny wrists. (...)
artwork: “Cultura Negra” [Black Culture] by Astrid Milena González Quintero
Snippet - Homepage CSW69_FR
AWID à la CSW69 Beijing+30 | #FreezeFascisms
Notre présence collective perturbe les mécanismes d’exclusion des institutions dans ces espaces tout en soutenant les mouvements qui s’organisent autour d’alternatives féministes aux systèmes d’oppression.
Participez aux conversations du 10 au 21 mars 2025 pour, collectivement, faire de la CSW69 un espace de résistance et de solidarité.
Snippet Forum Quoate Sara Abu (EN)
The Forum is a live example of what the bigger WE can do. We go to the Forum, we are seeds, we then get sowed. This we have to celebrate.
- Sara Abu Ghazal, Lebanon
Cristina Bautista
“Si nos mantenemos en silencio, nos matan. Si hablamos (nos matan) también. Así que, hablemos” Cristina Bautista, 2019.
Cristina Bautista fue una integrante de la comunidad Indígena Nasa, cuyo hogar se sitúa en la región del norte del Cauca, en Colombia. Cristina formó parte de la resistencia Nasa como líder y defensora de los derechos de la tierra, pero también como trabajadora social y gobernadora de la reserva Indígena Nasa Tacueyó.
Incansable defensora de los derechos del pueblo Nasa, Cristina habló alto y claro sobre la violencia dirigida contra su comunidad. En un discurso ante las Naciones Unidas, Cristina reclamó la protección de las vidas de las mujeres indígenas, y su participación en las diferentes esferas de la vida. En 2017, Cristina entró en el programa de Becas Indígenas de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos de la ONU y en 2019 recibió una subvención del Fondo de Contribuciones Voluntarias de la ONU para los Pueblos Indígenas.
"Me gustaría sacar a la luz la situación actual de los pueblos indígenas en Colombia, el asesinato de líderes indígenas, la represión de las protestas sociales. El acuerdo de paz, en lugar de ayudar, lo que ha hecho es reforzar el conflicto y la explotación de territorios sagrados en Colombia... En la situación actual, en casi todas las naciones indígenas, como mujeres, estamos trabajando para encontrar un futuro mejor para nuestras familias. No quiero que más mujeres del campo vivan en estas circunstancias. Las mujeres indígenas necesitamos oportunidades para participar en la vida política, económica, en la sociedad y en la cultura. Hoy me da fuerzas ver a todas estas mujeres aquí y ver que no estoy sola". - Cristina Bautista, 2019
El 29 de octubre de 2019, Cristina fue asesinada junto a cuatro guardias indígenas desarmados en un ataque que, supuestamente, fue llevado a cabo por miembros armados del grupo disidente de las FARC "Dagoberto Ramos".
Según Global Witness, "en los últimos años el asesinato de líderes comunitarios y sociales ha aumentado dramáticamente en Colombia".
"La comunidad Nasa ha alertado repetidamente a las autoridades sobre las amenazas que reciben y que ponen en peligro su seguridad. Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos que ponen los sucesivos gobiernos colombianos, los pueblos indígenas siguen corriendo grandes riesgos, especialmente, las figuras clave religiosas o comunitarias como Cristina Bautista". - Reunión informativa de la ONU para la prensa (en inglés), 1 de noviembre de 2019.
Film club - Films from Nuestramérica
Ya está disponible nuestro programa final del Club de Cine Feminista: “Films from Nuestramérica” es una serie de películas sobre realidades feministas latinoamericanas / centroamericanas curada por Alejandra Laprea (Venezuela).
A Collective Love Print
The Circle’s Conspiracy of Writers | Wazina Zondon
 |
 |
 |
| Also known as the Teta Research Network, The Conspiracy of Writers was founded in 2021 in the context of Kohl’s weekly writing circles. The Network is a transnational group of queer and feminist writers who engage in collective writing, thinking, and world-making. | Wazina Zondon is an Afghan raised in New York City. Her storycollecting and storytelling work centers collective memories and rites of passage in the diaspora. Currently, she is working on Faith: in Love/faith in love which (re)traces her parent’s love story and family’s inherited love print. |
Love is a contraband in Hell,
cause love is acid
that eats away bars.
But you, me, and tomorrow
hold hands and make vows
that struggle will multiply.
The hacksaw has two blades.
The shotgun has two barrels.
We are pregnant with freedom.
We are a conspiracy.
It is our duty to fight for freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
- “Love” by Assata Shakur
“If we can inherit trauma, can we inherit an imprint related to love?”
That is the question Wazina Zondon asks in her collective memoir Loveprint. Loveprint is a wandering, an overlap, a deviation that (re)creates, at the intersection of interviews and personal essays, our family’s stories and insights on love, partnership and romance. Under Wazina’s guidance, the circle’s conspiracy of writers came together and attempted to reproduce this literal blueprint in the form of collective writing, where our different stories, our genders and sexual identities complement and contradict each other. With our voices overlapping, we complete each other’s sentences to create a conversation, a memorial, pieces of ourselves that speak to a “we.”
What are the origins of your love print?
I am a so-called “happy accident.” There is much narration about this – an accidental life, one that is entirely wanted at the same time. I feel this shaped my way of loving, I don’t just fall in love; I risk the slips that lead to the fall. Perhaps it made me an amor fati kind of person.
I was told that I was an unwanted child. So I grew up to become an unwanted adult. The origins of my love print are based on being eternally unwelcomed. I am not a fruit of love or any happy feelings but rather one pain and burden. I don’t have a love print – at least not in this sense.
I know for a fact that both my parents were in love at some point, but mental health is such a demon, and until one confronts their demons, there is no winning.
I will never associate “love” with my parents or normative family. Love growing up was full of violence and responsibilities I didn’t sign up for or was even ready for. For the longest time, it felt like life and love were about carrying a big rock uphill. While my parents “loved each other,” it was a toxic ethos of violence, jealousy, and insecurity to grow up in. I grew up wanting to crave stability, and this is what is me now. I am a risk taker, but never in my “love space.”
I don’t know why my mother chose to host a child (me) within her.
She does not love in this form.
My mother tells me that if I have to think about “finding” love, I should never look at her marriage as a template. My love print comes instead from my raising dogs for the last two decades (18 years to be precise). The other way around is true as well – they raised me. I understand more and more about love and its many layers in their company.
I haven’t known love from a “print.” In our household we don’t talk about love. I had to teach myself how to love. It was hard work. Still, I fail and still, I keep on trying and I fail everyday. Perhaps failure is my love print.
My love print is the care, warmth, and understanding I give to others
surrounding me, whether a stranger, a friend, a relative, a lover.
My love print is political – uncalculated and unthought of.
I was born under heavy shelling.
My love print is the negative
print of that.
Lessons learned about love
I know more about what love is not than I know about what love is.
Love is neither anxiety nor panic.
Love is not asking permission to live or breathe. It is always about love and there is no love without freedom.
Everything you do is about using your heart except love. Love is about using your mind.
Sometimes I fear that my love language is lost in translation.
--- There are many ways
to map the origins
of how to
how not to
love
not love
love just enough
love far too much
some love
some loss
to love
to love lost ---
I cannot stand the idea of the couple. I cannot stand the idea of living alone while aging either. I am tired of doing the chores alone, moving houses alone, paying rent and bills alone... I imagine getting a stroke alone, and it scares me. I have no plan of “partnering up.” I want a world where I can get married to a friend, buy a house with a friend, not have sex.
Loving many does not corrupt a love shared between two, and whether love is romantic or not is really not that important.
When I reflect on the shoddy state of my relationships, I realize that I am in the relationship I was trained to be in. With all my “radicalness” I have not yet unlearned shitty gendered norms.
My need for stability feels “not radical” enough. I want to get out of this labeling. I want something I never had. I want to make it beautiful. I want to feel beautiful and safe – and only stability makes me feel that. Safe, sound, knowing home is neither about violence nor strife.
--- Love print – love to smell the books to see
where they were printed
I try to think of the origin of my
understanding and practice of love
Do we need origin, it is not the same as purity?
No purity or origin of love.
Why is it understanding and practice,
and not “emotion” that comes to mind? ---
When I call my parents, I don’t hang up the phone after we’ve said
goodbye, so I can hear the sounds of home.
What do we need to be/feel loved in death?
During my Sunni burial, I want all the women and men to come together for my burial. What’s with not being able to go say goodbye to dead people from a different sex? It will be Sunni because my mother would want it to be. It will be eco-friendly; no need for the headstone. I love all burial rituals. Quran is good, but I also want music. I really like Asmahan, Um Kulthum, and The Stone Roses.
I have a Monday-Friday playlist and two different ones for the weekend: one for Saturday and one for Sunday playlist. I would like those who loved me to play the music that I used to listen to, respecting the days – with some margin of tolerance as long as they stick to the playlists.
I want to be surrounded by the one(s) who have loved me, even for a moment. And in music and embowered in fresh cut flowers. I don’t want to be discovered dead; I want to pass away mid-laugh with loved ones.
I want to be remembered as someone who loved.
I don’t need to feel loved in death. I need the people around me to feel I loved them, even after I die. Being loved in death is about those who are alive. So I think more about how we come together as a living and loving community in the death of those we love and live with. How we take their memories with us. How we become archives of their lives.
--- Sometimes, you can only love people in their death. ---
I have to think back to the body being connected to a space. My family is very tiny and although we come from different places, it is as if every generation moved somewhere new. Perhaps this is the reason why death is not connected to a special place, a cemetery. It is common in our family to bury the dead without names or gravestones, or to distribute the ashes in the wind. I feel at peace with this kind of spaceless remembrance. The idea that my ashes fertilize new life gives me the sense of being loved, being remembered through recreation. My grandmother died earlier this year due to complications after the vaccination. Two hours after she died, my family sat laughing tears about her jokes, her hilarious way to tell stories. We laughed and loved, and it was as though she sat with us again. This is what would make me feel at peace – fertilizing soil, fertilizing conversations, and collective remembrance.
--- There were
Two streets that I used
To walk
To run
To play
To stay
There were
Five hours when the sun
Was hot
The sky was blue
The earth was green
There was
A flower I could
Smell
Touch
Squeeze
Crush
There were
The friends I could
Caress
The food
I could
inhale
The language
That would roll off my
lips
There might still be
Those many places
And things
And people
After me ---
Perhaps a promise that I will be “spatially commemorated” as a plant and taken care of in turns until it becomes a tree is enough. No name, no plaques – just the plant/tree, and knowing that it will be cared for. As for my body, I want to be cremated without any rituals and my bone ashes set free in the Arabian sea.
I need my body to be treated as subversively as it’s lived.
I do not want to be buried next to my family. In this tiny drawer next to all of the people who never knew me. Trapped in death as I was in life. I want to be cremated, and my ashes finally set free.
I want to be allowed to pass, not hang in the in-between, so it is a presence, an active process, a trespassing.
I will ask of you:
- To release me and let me pass
- To not let nostalgia muddy this moment because I will ask only for the normalcy of your expressions
- I have snuck the gentle glimpses and hoarded away the already small and large ways you loved me in order to be sustained. I kept myself alive on these
- To set a finite amount of time to grieve
- To be be reminded there is no separation in the beauty of loving; it is infinite and it regenerates without the body
I want to be remembered for the love I put into the world.
I want my body to be given away, and my organs
to further fuel love in (an)other live(s).
--- The smell of jasmine ---
Explore Transnational Embodiments
This journal edition in partnership with Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, will explore feminist solutions, proposals and realities for transforming our current world, our bodies and our sexualities.
التجسيدات العابرة للحدود
نصدر النسخة هذه من المجلة بالشراكة مع «كحل: مجلة لأبحاث الجسد والجندر»، وسنستكشف عبرها الحلول والاقتراحات وأنواع الواقع النسوية لتغيير عالمنا الحالي وكذلك أجسادنا وجنسانياتنا.
Yolanda Ordaz
Snippet - Impactmapper’s Database blurb - En
2025 Funding Database by ImpactMapper
Explore 150+ regularly updated funding opportunities in this searchable database, created in response to cuts in development aid. Filter by issue, region, funder type, and eligibility.
¿Qué es el Foro Internacional de AWID?
Cada tres o cuatro años, AWID celebra su principal evento internacional. Es el mayor foro mundial que concentra a los movimientos feministas y de justicia de género en toda su diversidad. Es una reunión global de activistas feministas, movimientos aliados, académicxs, donantes y formuladorxs de políticas. Los Foros alternan entre distintas regiones y países del Sur global.
Paulina Cruz Ruiz
Paulina Cruz Ruiz, originaire de Rabinal dans la région de Baja Verapaz au Guatemala, était une défenseuse des droits humains au pouvoir ancestral Maya Achí (autochtone). Elle participait activement à la mobilisation et à la résistance communautaires, notamment via des mesures juridiques contre des projets miniers sur des territoires autochtones, aux effets sévères et néfastes pour leur tissu socioenvironnemental.
« Le modèle d’industrie extractive promu par le gouvernement guatémaltèque et la construction de projets de développement à grande échelle sur des terres autochtones, sans le consentement des communautés, est source de litiges constants avec les mouvements de résistance. » - Minority Rights Group International (groupe international pour les droits des minorités)
Paulina a également participé à la Marche pour la dignité, la vie et la justice, durant laquelle des milliers de guatémaltèques ont initié, le 1er mai 2019, une marche de huit jours contre la corruption et l’impunité face aux poursuites et aux assassinats de défenseur·e·s des droits humains, des terres ainsi que de leaders paysan·ne·s et autochtones.
Paulina a été assassinée le 14 septembre 2019 près de chez elle, dans le village de Xococ.
D’après Minority Rights Group International, « l’une des problématiques constantes qui affecte le plus les communautés mayas tient dans l’accroissement des activités de l’industrie minière. »
En savoir plus sur les mayas au Guatemala (en anglais)
En savoir plus sur la Marche pour la dignité, la vie et la justice (en anglais)
