“Ashawo Work na Work”: How Young Ghanaian Feminists Are Making Feminist Futures A Reality

by Fatima B. Derby

In 2017, the AWID #PracticeSolidarity campaign highlighted how young feminists could build feminist futures by showing up for one another, being in cross-regional conversations with one another, marching in solidarity with other activists and collaborating between movements.  (...)

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< artwork: “Let it Grow” by Gucora Andu

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 ---

AWID en la CSW69 Beijing+30 | #CongelarFascismos

Nuestra presencia colectiva trastorna las prácticas institucionales de exclusión en dichos espacios y, a la vez, apoya los procesos de organización de los movimientos en torno a las alternativas feministas a los sistemas de opresión.

Súmate a las conversaciones desde el 10 al 21 de marzo de 2025, mientras transformamos de forma colectiva la CSW69 en espacios para y sobre la resistencia y la solidaridad.

Conoce más

Mirándome observar los espacios seguros

por Judyannet Muchiri

En octubre del año pasado, me fui a Kenia para empezar lo que he llegado a considerar el trabajo más importante que he hecho hasta ahora. (...)

Leer

arte: «Healing Together» [Sanar juntxs], Upasana Agarwal >

Chers mouvements féministes,

Vous nous avez accueillies à bras ouverts lorsqu’il a été annoncé en 2016 au Forum de l’AWID à Bahia que nous serions toutes deux codirectrices exécutives de l’AWID. Nous pensions alors que tout était possible, nous allions construire une oasis féministe qui nourrirait nos combats collectifs à venir. Nous avons quitté Bahia avec un sens aigu de nos nouvelles responsabilités, nous engageant à vous servir de notre mieux et à diriger l’AWID de la manière la plus efficace et la plus soutenante pour vous.

Il est maintenant temps pour nous de laisser la place à un nouveau leadership !

Plus de cinq ans après le début de cette aventure, nous avons décidé de faire coïncider la fin du cycle stratégique actuel de l’AWID avec l’arrêt de notre codirection. Nous pensons que c’est le moment idéal de quitter nos fonctions et de soutenir la relève. Nous pensons en effet que le leadership féministe transformateur est cyclique.

Nous avons pleinement conscience de l’opportunité qui nous a été donnée de jouer un rôle dans les 40 ans d’histoire de l’AWID, de soutenir et mener l’organisation tout au long du difficile contexte de la pandémie mondiale et des nombreuses crises qui se sont succédé.

Mouvements féministes, nous savons que vous ferez partie de notre prochaine aventure, quelle qu’elle soit. Vous nous enseignez sans relâche la force et la résilience. Nous changeons de fonction, mais nous continuerons collectivement à progresser ensemble.

Comment nous avons avancé

Nous avons des souvenirs très clairs de ceux d’entre vous en Indonésie, en Malaisie, au Népal, en Thaïlande, en Taiwan et ailleurs encore, avec qui nous avons co-créé le Forum de l’AWID, dans la générosité et la spontanéité. Sans aucun doute, notre plus grand regret de ces cinq dernières années est de n’avoir pas pu vous offrir un autre Forum en présentiel.

Dès que la difficile (quoique nécessaire) décision d’annuler le forum de l’AWID a été prise, nous nous sommes centrées sur les questions existentielles avec lesquelles de si nombreuses organisations se débattaient : comment transformer nos manières de travailler pour continuer à être pertinentes, comment prendre en compte la fatigue, la maladie et le deuil qui nous touchent toutes et tous de diverses manières ? Comment construire des relations porteuses de sens, lorsque l’on doit se cantonner aux interactions en ligne ? Il n’y a toujours pas de réponses évidentes à ces questions mais, mouvements féministes, vous avez ouvert la voie.

Nous étions si fières de voir la manière dont les féministes prenaient les rênes d’initiatives visant à atténuer les effets de la COVID-19 sur nos communautés. Les féministes sont les intervenant·es de première ligne dans les crises et nous continuerons à réclamer la reconnaissance et des ressources pour ce travail. Vous avez souvent répondu avec enthousiasme à nos mobilisations, participant de manières toujours plus géniales à notre campagne pour un Sauvetage féministe et ensuite au Festival Crear Résister Transform. Vous vous êtes spontanément jointes à nos actions de plaidoyer, lors d’interventions dans les espaces les droits humains, auprès de responsables des politiques ou de bailleurs de fonds.

Nous voulons témoigner à l’équipe actuelle, et précédente, de l’AWID (tant le personnel que les membres du CA), avec qui nous avons eu l’honneur de travailler au cours de ces années, tout notre amour et notre respect. Nous avons appris de chacun·e d’entre vous et sommes profondément reconnaissantes de toutes vos contributions à l’AWID au fil des ans.

Nous avons été les toutes premières codirectrices exécutives de l’AWID. Nous avons beaucoup appris des multiples traditions activistes et communautaires de leadership collectif et des organisations féministes qui l’avaient fait avant nous. Nous savons que nous n’aurions pas pu faire ce travail sans l’autre. Nous avons pu nous appuyer sur les forces l’une de l’autre et nous nous sommes soutenues mutuellement pour faire le meilleur travail possible.

Et maintenant

Nous sommes arrivées à cette fonction ensemble, et repartons ensemble, même si nous décalons nos dates de départ. Nous voulons toutes les deux assurer une transition aussi douce que possible et une arrivée maîtrisée de la nouvelle direction.

Mouvements féministes, vous êtes entre de bonnes mains avec l’équipe de l’AWID. Elle sait ce qu’elle fait. Et nous sommes fières de quitter l’organisation alors qu’elle est si forte et si résiliente. Nous espérons voir bon nombre d’entre vous au Forum de l’AWID en 2024 – vous nous reconnaîtrez facilement, nous serons les deux personnes totalement relax dans l’assemblée !

Nous vous envoyons de l’amour et de la reconnaissance pour tout ce que vous avez fait avec et pour nous. L’impact que vous avez dans nos vies s’étend sur bien plus que les cinq dernières années et continuera, sans aucun doute, bien au-delà.

Cindy et Hakima

Who Can Fund Me?

Reclaim Power to #FreezeFascisms: Resources for Feminists to Survive & Thrive 

Feminist and gender justice movements continue to be chronically underfunded in the face of global funding cuts and freezes. Particularly in Global South regions with shrinking civic spaces, resource scarcity has impacted the most vulnerable communities. 

In the face of these setbacks, AWID has updated the Who Can Fund Me? Database - an easy-to-use, practical tool for movements looking for funders from philanthropic foundations, multilateral funders to women’s and feminist funds to support vital lifesaving efforts. 

Explore now Get the user guide

Conoce más sobre el impacto del foro a través de estas historias.

Série sur les résistances féministes

Explorer la série de photos

Every year, AWID seeks to renew and enrich the perspectives and experience reflected in our Board of Directors by bringing in new members.

Currently, we are looking for individuals to serve 3-year terms on AWID’s Board, starting in early 2023. This is an opportunity to contribute to our organisation’s governance and to be part of an amazing group of feminists from around the world. 

Please help us to identify thoughtful and bold feminists to nominate for election by July 29, 2022.

Please also share this invitation to nominate with your networks!

Who are we looking for?

First and foremost, we are looking for candidates who are committed to AWID’s mission, who can make connections between local and global struggles, and who can help us to be thoughtful about how to best leverage AWID's positioning and strengths in a constantly evolving context. Candidates must be willing to uphold the legal duties and responsibilities of the AWID Board in the best interests of the organization. 

This is a voluntary role that requires commitment and engagement throughout the year. Board members are expected to commit a minimum of 10-15 days per year to attend in-person and virtual meetings, and contribute to other communications.  

We aspire for our Board to reflect diversity in all its forms, particularly in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, age, geography and background. Additionally, we seek Board members with experience relevant to AWID’s priority areas of work. 

While we will consider all candidates, in light of the current composition of the board, priority consideration will be given to:

What Board members bring to AWID

The Board of Directors is key to inform AWID’s strategic direction and support our organisation to fulfill its mission in coherence with the world we live in and the needs of our movements. 

Board members contribute to the organization in many ways: bringing governance experience from other spaces, perspectives from diverse sectors of feminist movements, and substantive expertise in areas relevant to AWID’s strategy. 
The candidates who are ultimately elected will be joining the AWID Board in 2023, accompanying us for the launch of our new strategic plan led by AWID’s new Co-Executive Directors, and the planning of our next international Forum.   

Do you know someone with this profile?

(You can nominate yourself or someone you know - with their consent)

Please also share this invitation to nominate with your networks!

Thank you, in advance, for helping us find our next wonderful Board members to support AWID in its journey ahead!  

Getting the Money We Need | A 101 Guide on Fundraising for Small Grassroots Organizations

From building prospect funders lists with *templates*, to understand  how to write a solid grant proposal, with ‘Getting the Money we Need’ Guide really we don't have to figure this out alone anymore

Read and download the guide here

Tous nos processus de changement reposent sur les relations que nous établissons dans des espaces comme les forums de l'AWID, où l'on danse ensemble, où l'on fait ressortir son humour, sa vraie personnalité, où l'on raconte des histoires. C'est ce qui fait la différence.
- Nicky Mcintyre, États-Unis

The Turtle’s Rage (2012) German | Arabic with English subtitles

THE TURTLE'S RAGE tells the story of a mysterious man, whose life has been molded by flight, expulsion, life in exile and the failed return to Palestine. The film is composed of a daughter's search for answers from her father.

Live Conversation with Pary El-Qalqili, filmmaker of “The Turtle’s Rage”

por Nandini Tanya Lallmon, República de Mauricio (@nandini_tanya)

Olajumoke «Jay» Abdullahi y Kym Oliver son feministas revolucionarias en más de un sentido. 

Las dos amigas se llaman a sí mismas las «Triple Cripples» [«Triples Inválidas»] porque, como mujeres discapacitadas negras, se ven sometidas a tres niveles de discriminación. Jay, actualmente de 31 años, contrajo polio cuando era bebé y utiliza una férula y unas muletas como sostén, mientras que Kym, de 25 años, tiene esclerosis múltiple y se moviliza en silla de ruedas. El nombre del dúo surge de un esfuerzo por redefinir la palabra «inválida» que, según ellas, «ha sido un término habitualmente usado contra las personas discapacitadas como injuria, como una forma infalible de recordarnos que estábamos “falladas” y que siempre íbamos a ser “menos que”.»

Como mujeres negras, Kym y Jay han sido víctimas del estereotipo racial globalizado que hipersexualiza la piel oscura. En su libro Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain [Corazón de la raza: las vidas de las mujeres negras en Gran Bretaña], Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie y Suzanne Scafe describen cómo las mujeres negras han sido históricamente definidas como un «riesgo de alta promiscuidad» por los doctores, debido a su libido y su fertilidad. Jay explica que «la gente piensa que estoy siempre dispuesta a hacer de todo y cualquier cosa todo el tiempo porque soy una mujer negra». Aunque ambas mujeres han sido sometidas a una intensa fetichización debido a su color de piel, sus discapacidades han confundido a muchas personas. Kym describe así su experiencia como mujer con curvas: «Tengo el tipo de cuerpo que la gente quiere manosear, y les parece que yo debería poder aceptarlo, pero, al mismo tiempo, existe esta idea de que yo no debería tener pretensiones, por mi discapacidad.»
 
En las plataformas de citas en línea, a Jay le han preguntado si puede realizar ciertas posiciones sexuales, dado que ciertas potenciales parejas «han decidido que quieren estar contigo de este modo y quieren saber si tu corporalidad puede facilitarlo.» Durante una consulta de control, Kym hizo disculparse a unx profesional médicx que, mientras completaba un formulario de admisión, le preguntó cuántas parejas sexuales ha tenido con un tono que implicaba «yo sé que estas preguntas no son aplicables en tu caso, pero tenemos que seguir el proceso estándar del cuestionario.» 

El error de pensar que la falta de autonomía física equivale a una falta de deseo sexual es generalizado.

En la escuela, Jay era excluida de las clases de educación sexual, porque se presuponía que estaba incapacitada para tener sexo. Ella explica que incluso las organizaciones bien intencionadas que promueven el acceso a los servicios de salud sexual y reproductiva a menudo no tienen en cuenta las necesidades específicas de las mujeres discapacitadas. Por ejemplo, las píldoras son consideradas con frecuencia un método anticonceptivo efectivo, sin ninguna mención de que pueden agravar los riesgos de coágulos de las mujeres que usan sillas de ruedas.

Con sede en Londres, las Triple Cripples esperaban ansiosamente participar, junto con el equipo Decolonising Contraception [descolonizar la contracepción], en el SexFest2020, un festival de un día organizado para personas de color y dedicado a la salud y el bienestar sexuales. Desafortunadamente, el evento fue cancelado debido a la pandemia del COVID-19. A pesar de ello, sin desanimarse, Jay y Kim se volcaron a sus plataformas de activismo en línea, para oponerse a la forma en que la sexualidad es vista desde una perspectiva estrictamente heteronormativa y para desafiar la idea de que la femineidad está definida por la capacidad de procrear. El dúo inauguró un canal de YouTube y un podcast (también llamado «The Triple Cripples») para promover la representación de las personas discriminadas de múltiples formas como seres humanos holísticos. Sus planes a futuro incluyen un documental creativo y una muestra fotográfica dedicada a luchar contra la discriminación y a difundir las voces de personas de color discapacitadas.

La experiencia de discriminación basada en la raza, el género y la discapacidad es más que acumulativa.

Si bien las mujeres discapacitadas de color comparten experiencias de discriminación por motivos de discapacidad con otras personas discapacitadas, experiencias de sexismo con otras mujeres, y experiencias de racismo con otras personas de color, estas experiencias interactúan y no pueden ser separadas: las mujeres discapacitadas de color experimentan una discriminación singular como mujeres discapacitadas de color. 

Si bien las Triple Cripples reconocen que las ideas anticuadas y superficiales sobre la diversidad no se transformarán, como por arte de magia, en espacios inclusivos de un día para otro, siguen confiando en que sus pequeños hachazos finalmente lograrán derribar los grandes robles que las prácticas discriminatorias representan para ellas.

«Bloomed» [En flor] 

de Titash Sen, Kolkata, India (@unzeroed)

La alegría de aceptarse y crecer al calor de esa luz.

“Asignado Nderentendei Al Nacer”

de Bastión Moral, Asunción, Paraguay (@basti0nmoral)

La mujeridad obligatoria es un dispositivo colonial heterocispatriarcal de violencia hacia cuerpos asignados femeninos al nacer. Los cuerpos trans seguimos resistiendo a pesar de la invisibilización y apagamiento histórico. No soy mujer, me asignaron un género a partir de mis genitales.  

Ever Wondered What Budgets for Feminist  Organizations Look Like?

A closer look at actual budgets reveals major income diversity and inequality.

We are monitoring this and other risks carefully, and will publish comprehensive health and safety information when the registration opens, so you could make an informed decision. In addition, the hybrid format is designed to provide a meaningful engagement experience to the participants who will prefer not to travel or are not able to travel.