
Lohana Berkins

WHRDs are self-identified women and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBTQI) people and others who defend rights and are subject to gender-specific risks and threats due to their human rights work and/or as a direct consequence of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
WHRDs are subject to systematic violence and discrimination due to their identities and unyielding struggles for rights, equality and justice.
The WHRD Program collaborates with international and regional partners as well as the AWID membership to raise awareness about these risks and threats, advocate for feminist and holistic measures of protection and safety, and actively promote a culture of self-care and collective well being in our movements.
WHRDs are exposed to the same types of risks that all other defenders who defend human rights, communities, and the environment face. However, they are also exposed to gender-based violence and gender-specific risks because they challenge existing gender norms within their communities and societies.
We work collaboratively with international and regional networks and our membership
We aim to contribute to a safer world for WHRDs, their families and communities. We believe that action for rights and justice should not put WHRDs at risk; it should be appreciated and celebrated.
Promoting collaboration and coordination among human rights and women’s rights organizations at the international level to strengthen responses concerning safety and wellbeing of WHRDs.
Supporting regional networks of WHRDs and their organizations, such as the Mesoamerican Initiative for WHRDs and the WHRD Middle East and North Africa Coalition, in promoting and strengthening collective action for protection - emphasizing the establishment of solidarity and protection networks, the promotion of self-care, and advocacy and mobilization for the safety of WHRDs;
Increasing the visibility and recognition of WHRDs and their struggles, as well as the risks that they encounter by documenting the attacks that they face, and researching, producing, and disseminating information on their struggles, strategies, and challenges:
Mobilizing urgent responses of international solidarity for WHRDs at risk through our international and regional networks, and our active membership.
No, no es necesario ser afiliadx de AWID para participar, pero lxs afiliadxs de AWID reciben una tarifa de inscripción con descuento, así como otros beneficios.
Obtén más información sobre cómo sumarte a la membresía de AWID.
The 3 Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) from the Pacific we are featuring in this year's Online Tribute have worked in the media, campaigned for disability rights and advocated for women’s rights. Their contributions are missed and we honor them in this Tribute. Please join AWID in commemorating these WHRDs, their work and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute.
Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file
Una colección viva de recursos para apoyar a los movimientos feministas, a personas que diseñan políticas y a aliadxs que resisten a las tendencias fascistas, fundamentalistas y anti-derechos.
Oui ! Nous explorons actuellement des technologies innovantes qui permettront une connexion et une participation considérables.
Este kit incluye ejemplos de mensajes para ser utilizados en Twitter, Facebook y LinkedIn, como así también imágenes que puedes usar para acompañar a estos mensajes.
La utilización de este kit es muy simple. Solo tienes que seguir estos pasos:
Descarga aquí tus imágenes favoritas:
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Combina estos mensajes con las imágenes para Twitter
Yo voy al #AWIDForum. Es EL lugar para conectar con los movimientos por los derechos de las mujeres y la justicia social ¡Únete a mi!: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
¡Ya quiero re-imaginar los #FuturosFeministas c/ otrxs activistas x los DD. de las mujeres y la justicia social en el #AWIDForum! Únete: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Me entusiasma poder asistir al Foro de AWID el próximo mes de mayo ¡Ahora ya podemos registrarnos! ¡Únete a mi! http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Se encuentra abierta la inscripción para participar del #AWIDForum! en Costa do Sauípe, Brasil, 8-11 de sept 2016: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Únete al #AWIDForum, un encuentro histórico global de activistas x los derechos de las mujeres y la justicia social: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Únete al #AWIDForum para celebrar los logros de nuestros movimientos y las lecciones aprendidas para seguir avanzando http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
El #AWIDForum, no es solo un evento sino una oportunidad para confrontar la opresión y promover el avance de la justicia: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Únete al #AWIDForum para celebrar, pensar estrategias y renovar nuestros movimientos y a nosotrxs mismxs: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Construyamos juntxs los #FuturosFeministas. Inscríbete al #AWIDForum. Costa do Sauípe, Brasil: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Únete a nosotrxs para re-imaginar y crear juntxs los #FuturosFeministas en el #AWIDForum. Inscríbete: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
#FuturosFeministas: aprovecha el momento en el #AWIDForum para promover nuestras visiones de un mundo mejor: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Seremos 2000 activistas de movimientos sociales en el #AWIDForum, pensando estrategias para nuestros #FuturosFeministas http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Somos mucho más que una sola lucha. Únete a nosotrxs en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Únete al #AWIDForum, un espacio para pensar estrategias entre movimientos y hacer uso de nuestro poder colectivo: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Movilicemos la solidaridad y el poder colectivo entre movimientos sociales en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Rompamos el aislamiento entre nuestros movimientos. Re-imaginemos y creemos juntxs nuestros futuros en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Solidaridad es un verbo. Pongámosla en acción en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Donantes se comprometen con los derechos de las mujeres y los movimientos sociales en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
Los medios de comunicación y los movimientos amplifican los #FuturosFeministas en el #AWIDForum: http://forum.awid.org/forum16/es
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Vous souhaitez vous rassembler pour renforcer les résistances ? Cette méthodologie de formation propose des exercices de groupes qui renforcent les connaissances et le pouvoir du collectif, avec des adaptations pour répondre à vos besoins.
We will share information about the program, the spaces, and the way for everyone to participate in shaping them, as soon as we can, and ways for you to participate in shaping them - on the road to the Forum, and during the Forum. Please stay tuned!
After assessing your organization’s capacity and research goals, you may choose to conduct a survey as one of the methods of data collection for your research analysis.
In this section:
- Why conduct a survey?
- Identify your survey population 1. Online survey 2. Paper survey
- Create your questions 1. Short and clear questions 2. Simple and universal language 3. "Closed" and "open" questions 4. Logical organization 5. Less than 20 mins 6. Simple and exciting
- Test and translate 1. Your advisors 2. Draft and test 3. Translation
- Target the right population 1. Sample size 2. Degree of participation 3. Database and contact list
A survey is an excellent way to gather information on individual organizations to capture trends at a collective level.
For example, one organization’s budget size does not tell you much about a trend in women’s rights funding, but if you know the budgets of 1,000 women’s rights organizations or even 100, you can start to form a picture of the collective state of women’s rights funding.
As you develop your survey questions, keep in mind the research framing that you developed in the previous section.
Remember: Your framing helps you determine what information you are trying to procure through your survey. The data collected from this survey should allow you to accomplish your goals, answer your key questions, and create your final products.
This is an important step – the clearer you are about which populations you want to survey, the more refined your questions will be.
Depending on your research goals, you may want to create separate surveys for women’s rights organizations, women’s funds and donors. Or you may want to focus your survey on women’s groups and collect interviews for women’s funds and donors, as a survey for each population can be resource-intensive.
The questions you ask women’s groups may be different than ones you would ask women’s funds. If you plan on surveying more than one population, we encourage you to tailor your data collection to each population.
At the same time, some key questions for each population can and should overlap in order to draw comparative analysis from the answers.
If you can reach your survey population online, it is useful and efficient to create an online survey.
We recommend two online tools, both which offer free versions:
Survey Gizmo allows you to convert your data for SPSS, a statistical software useful for advanced data analysis
Your data analyst person(s) will be the best person(s) to determine which tool is best for your survey based on staff capacity and analysis plans.
For accessibility, consider making a PDF form version of your survey that you can attach via email. This ensures organizations that have sporadic internet connections or those that pay for it by the minute can download the survey and complete it without requiring a constant online connection.
You may decide that an online approach is not sufficiently accessible or inclusive enough for your popuation.
In this case, you will need to create a paper survey and methods to reach offline populations (through popular events or through post, with pre-stamped envelopes for returning).
Make it easy for participants to complete your survey.
If the questions are confusing or require complex answers, you risk having participants leave the survey unfinished or providing answers that are unusable for your analysis.
Ensure your questions only ask for one item of information at a time.
For example:
- What is your organization’s budget this year?
Easy to answer: participant can easily locate this information for their organization, and it is only asking for one item of information.- What percentage of your budget have you identified as likely sources for funding for your organization, but are still unconfirmed?
Confusing and difficult to answer: are you asking for a list of unconfirmed funding sources or percentage of funding that is likely but unconfirmed?
This information is difficult to obtain: the respondent will have to calculate percentages, which they may not have on hand. This increases the risk that they will not complete the survey.
Many words and acronyms that are familiar to you may be unknown to survey participants, such as “resource mobilization”, “WHRD”, and “M&E”, so be sure to choose more universal language to express your questions.
If you must use industry lingo – phrases and words common to your colleagues but not widely known – then providing a definition will make your survey questions easier to understand.
Be sure to spell out any acronyms you use. For example, if you use WHRD, spell it out as “Women’s Human Rights Defenders".
Closed questions:
Only one response is possible (such as “yes,” “no” or a number). Survey participants cannot answer in their own words and they typically have to choose from predetermined categories that you created or enter in a specific number. Responses to closed questions are easier to measure collectively and are often quantitative.
Example of a closed question: What is your organization’s budget?
Open-ended questions:
These are qualitative questions that are often descriptive. Respondents answer these questions entirely in their own words. These are more suitable for interviews than surveys.
They are harder to analyze at a collective level as compared to closed-end questions, especially if your survey sample is large. However, by making open-ended questions very specific, you will make it easier to analyze the responses.
Whenever possible, design your survey questions so that participants must select from a list of options instead of offering open-ended questions. This will save a lot of data cleaning and analysis time.
Example of open-ended question: What specific challenges did you face in fundraising this year?
Familiarize yourself with different types of questions
There are several ways to ask closed-ended questions. Here are some examples you can review and determine what fits best for the type of data you want to collect:
If you plan to conduct this research at regular intervals (such as every two years), we recommend developing a baseline survey that you can repeat in order to track trends over time.
Set 1: Screening questions
Screening questions will determine the participant’s eligibility for the survey.
The online survey options we provided allow you to end the survey if respondents do not meet your eligibility criteria. Instead of completing the survey, they will be directed to a page that thanks them for their interest but explains that this survey is intended for a different type of respondent.
For example, you only want women’s rights groups in a given location to take this survey. The screening questions can determine the location of the participant and prevent respondents from other locations from continuing the survey.
Set 2: Standardized, basic demographic questions
These questions would collect data specific to the respondent, such as name and location of organization. These may overlap with your screening questions.
If resources permit, you can store these answers on a database and only ask these questions the first year an organization participates in your survey.
This way when the survey is repeated in future years, it is faster for organizations to complete the entire survey, increasing chances of completion.
Set 3: Standardized and mandatory funding questions
These questions will allow you to track income and funding sustainability. Conducted every year or every other year, this allows you to capture trends across time.
Set 4: Special issues questions
These questions account for current context. They can refer to a changing political or economic climate. They can be non-mandatory funding questions, such as attitudes towards fundraising.
For example, AWID’s 2011 WITM Global Survey asked questions on the new “women & girls” investment trend from the private sector.
The shorter, the better: your survey shouldn’t exceed 20 minutes to ensure completion and respect respondents’ time.
It is natural to get excited and carried away by all the types of questions that could be asked and all the information that could be obtained. However, long surveys will lead to fatigue and abandonment from participants or loss of connection between participants and your organization.
Every additional question in your survey will add to your analytical burden once the survey is complete.
General tips
- Ask for exact budgets instead of offering a range (in our experience, specific amounts are more useful in analysis).
- Specify currency! If necessary, ask everyone to convert their answers to the same currency or ask survey takers to clearly state the currency they are using in their financial answers.
- Ensure you collect enough demographic information on each organization to contextualize results and draw out nuanced trends.
For example, if you are analyzing WITM for a particular country, it will be useful to know what region each organization is from or at what level (rural, urban, national, local) they work in order to capture important trends such as the availability of greater funding for urban groups or specific issues.
Involving your partners from the start will allow you to build deeper relationships and ensure more inclusive, higher quality research.
They will provide feedback on your draft survey, pilot test the survey, and review your draft research analysis drawn from your survey results and other data collection.
These advisors will also publicize the survey to their audiences once it is ready for release. If you plan on having the survey in multiple languages, ensure you have partners who use those languages.
If you decide to do both survey and interviews for your data collection, your advisor-partners on your survey design can also double as interviewees for your interview data collection process.
After your survey draft is complete, test it with your partners before opening it up to your respondents. This will allow you to catch and adjust any technical glitches or confusing questions in the survey.
It will also give you a realistic idea of the time it takes to take the survey.
Once the survey is finalized and tested in your native language, it can be translated.
Be sure to test the translated versions of your survey as well. At least some of your pilot testers should be native speakers of the translated languages to ensure clarity.
Your survey sample size is the number of participants that complete your survey.
Your survey sample should reflect the qualities of the larger population you intend to analyze.
For example: you would like to analyze the millions of women’s rights groups in Valyria but you lack the time and resources to survey every single one.
Instead, you can survey only 500 of the Valyrian women’s rights groups – a sample size - to represent the qualities of all the women’s groups in the region.
Recommended sample size
Although it is not necessary to determine your exact sample size before you launch your survey, having a size in mind will allow you to determine when you have reached enough participants or whether you should extend the dates that the survey is available, in case you feel that you have not reached enough people.
Even more important than size of a sample is the degree to which all members of the target population are able to participate in a survey.
If large or important segments of the population are systematically excluded (whether due to language, accessibility, timing, database problems, internet access or another factor) it becomes impossible to accurately assess the statistical reliability of the survey data.
In our example: you need to ensure all women’s groups in Valyria had the opportunity to participate in the survey.
If a segment of women’s groups in Valyria do not use internet, and you only pull participants for your sample through online methods, then you are missing an important segment when you have your final sample, thus it is not representative of all women’s groups in Valyria.
You cannot accurately draw conclusions on your data if segments of the population are missing in your sample size; and ensuring a representative sample allows you to avoid this mistake.
To gain an idea of what the makeup of women’s groups for your area of research (region, population, issue, etc) looks like, it may be useful to look at databases.
By understanding the overall makeup of women’s groups that you plan to target, you can have an idea of what you want your sample to look like - it should be like a mini-version of the larger population.
After participants have taken your survey, you can then gauge if the resulting population you reached (your sample size) matches the makeup of the larger population. If it doesn’t match, you may then decide to do outreach to segments you believe are missing or extend the window period that your survey is open.
Do not be paralyzed if you are unsure of how representative your sample size is – do your best to spread your survey as far and wide as possible.
4. Collect and analyze your data
Alors que le capitalisme hétéropatriarcal s’acharne à nous contraindre au consumérisme et à la conformité, nous constatons que nos luttes sont cloisonnées et séparées par des frontières aussi bien physiques que virtuelles.
Avec les défis supplémentaires d’une pandémie mondiale à surmonter, cette stratégie du « diviser pour mieux régner » a favorisé l’expansion de l’exploitation dans de nombreux domaines.
Malgré tout, du 1er au 30 septembre 2021, le festival Crear | Résister | Transform : un festival dédié aux mouvements féministes ! de l’AWID nous a emmené·e·s à la découverte de ce que cela signifiait d’incarner nos réalités dans des espaces virtuels. Lors du festival, des activistes féministes du monde entier se sont réuni·e·s non seulement pour partager des expériences de libertés, de résistances et de solidarités transfrontalières durement gagnées, mais aussi pour exprimer ce à quoi pourrait ressembler une forme transnationale d’unité.
C’est précisément cette unité qui a le potentiel de dépasser les frontières, permettant de tisser une vision de l’avenir qui est transformatrice parce qu’abolitionniste et anticapitaliste. À travers des infrastructures numériques que nous avons investies avec notre queerness, notre résistance et nos imaginaires, le festival a présenté un moyen de se détourner des systèmes qui nous rendent complices de l’oppression des autres et de nous-mêmes.
Si Audre Lorde nous a appris que « les outils du maître ne détruiront jamais la maison du maître », Sara Ahmed nous a montré en revanche que nous pouvons en faire mauvais usage. Le fait d’avoir à créer un espace de rassemblement, en dépit de toutes les autres contraintes pesant sur nos emplois du temps, nous a permis d’imaginer une façon de rompre avec la réalité du capitalisme hétéropatriarcal.
Maintenant, si nous comprenons le rassemblement comme une forme de plaisir, il devient alors possible de faire le lien entre le plaisir transgressif et la résistance transnationale/transdigitale; entre les types de plaisir qui bousculent les frontières d’une part, et la queerness, la théâtralité, la lutte pour la terre et les autochtones, l’anticapitalisme et l’organisation anticoloniale d’autre part.
La présente édition a tenté de donner une idée de la manière dont l’exercice de rassemblement du festival a revêtu de multiples formes et imaginations. Au-delà des collaborations directes avec certain·e·s de ses orateurices et rêveur·se·s, nous avons fait appel à une pléthore d’autres voix du Sud mondial pour aborder plusieurs de ces sujets et thématiques. Vous trouverez ci-dessous une carte de certains des panels du festival qui nous ont le plus inspiré·e·s.
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Ya tienes el producto final y completo de la investigación organizado y editado. Ahora querrás facilitar la difusión de los resultados y para ello necesitarás que sean visualmente accesibles e interesantes.
En esta sección
- Prepara el informe extenso para la difusión pública
1. Piensa tal como lo hace tu público
2. Trabaja con profesionales del diseño
3. Asegura la consistencia de los productos- Controla la calidad de las traducciones
Considera la posibilidad de elaborar productos más breves además del informe extenso.
Como dijéramos en «Sintetiza los resultados de la investigación», AWID muchas veces prepara productos más breves a partir del informe de investigación completo. Esto permite difundirlo más y mejor entre audiencias específicas de importancia clave.
Siempre ten presente cuál es la población a la que te diriges: ¿quién va a leer tu informe?
Ejemplos de productos breves derivados de un informe más extenso:
Todo el tiempo nos bombardean con información. Para conservar el interés de la audiencia, el producto deberá tener un atractivo visual. Una vez más, saber qué quieres lograr y a quién esperas llegar, permitirá que quien se encargue del diseño pueda crear productos para audiencias específicas.
Un informe escrito de muchas páginas en PDF tal vez te parezca la única forma posible de presentar la investigación, pero a mucha gente le puede resultar abrumador — sobre todo en Internet.
Si quieres compartir el producto con una comunidad en línea, piensa en crear memes e infografías para usar en las redes sociales, blogs y plataformas virtuales.
Para decidir si vas a crear o no productos más breves, piensa si podrás dividir los resultados en varios productos más breves para compartirlos con poblaciones específicas o en distintos momentos del año, reavivando así el interés por el producto.
Si cuentas con un tiempo limitado y el presupuesto te lo permite, te recomendamos contratar a profesionales del diseño.
Por razones económicas puedes sentir la tentación de pedirle al personal de tu organización que le dé formato al informe. Pero un diseño gráfico profesional puede marcar una gran diferencia en el aspecto del producto final y por lo tanto en el impacto que podrá alcanzar.
Las personas que se encarguen del diseño (ya sean de tu organización o contratadxs) deben ser capaces de:
¿Qué necesitarás aportarles a quienes se encarguen del diseño?
Recuerda que estarás trabajando con profesionales del diseño, que no necesariamente conocen las temáticas de las mujeres ni tampoco los resultados de la investigación, sobre todo si son personas contratadas y que no forman parte de tu organización.
Comunícales qué elementos del informe son importantes para ti y cuál es tu audiencia. Ellxs te sugerirán formas de destacar esos elementos y de hacer que todo el producto resulte atractivo a lxs usuarixs.
Cuando hayas creado un conjunto de productos informativos más breves, no olvides vincularlos entre sí:
También es importante que el personal que hizo la investigación se involucre en este estadio del proceso, para garantizar que todos los productos derivados sean consistentes con los resultados de la investigación.
Una vez que hayas completado el diseño y la presentación del informe de investigación en su versión final, asegúrate de volver a enviar a traducir cualquier modificación que se haya producido en la terminología o el contenido.
Si además creaste productos breves, una vez que estén diseñados y listos para ser difundidos también necesitarás contar con copias en los idiomas a los que se tradujo el informe. Las traducciones deben ser lo suficientemente claras como para que quien se encarga del diseño pueda elaborar los productos aun si no habla el idioma en que están escritos.
Una vez completadas las traducciones, asegúrate de que una persona que sea hablante nativa del/los idioma/s que corresponda/n las revise, antes de difundirlas.
7. Sintetiza los resultados de la investigación
• 2 - 3 meses
• 1 persona (o más) de investigación
• 1 Editor (editor web o si crea un producto en línea)
• Personal o empresa de diseño
• Traductores, de ofrecer encuesta en varios idiomas
• Lista de los espacios en línea para la difusión
7. Sintetiza los resultados de la investigación
9. Haz incidencia y cuéntale al mundo
with Naike Ledan and Fédorah Pierre-Louis.