AWID Forum: Co-creating Feminist Futures
In September 2016, the 13th AWID international Forum brought together in Brazil over 1800 feminists and women’s rights advocates in a spirit of resistance and resilience.
This section highlights the gains, learnings and resources that came out of our rich conversations. We invite you to explore, share and comment!
What has happened since 2016?
One of the key takeaways from the 2016 Forum was the need to broaden and deepen our cross-movement work to address rising fascisms, fundamentalisms, corporate greed and climate change.
With this in mind, we have been working with multiple allies to grow these seeds of resistance:
- Our Seed Initiatives, has helped 20 ideas that emerged at the Forum to grow into concrete actions
- The video “Defending people and planet” and guide “Weaving resistance through action” put courageous WHRDs in the spotlight and present concrete strategies they use to confront corporate power.
- With our animations about the State of Our Feminist Movements and Climate and Environmental Justice, movements now have creative tools to support their advocacy work.
- The compiling artistic expressions of our #MovementsMatter series continues to inspire stronger and more creative organizing around the world.
- Movements can also benefit from new methodologies on Visioning Feminist Futures (Coming up soon!)
And through our next strategic plan and Forum process, we are committed to keep developing ideas and deepen the learnings ignited at the 2016 Forum.
What happens now?
The next AWID Forum will take place in the Asia Pacific region (exact location and dates to be announced in 2018).
We look forward to you joining us!
About the AWID Forum
AWID Forums started in 1983, in Washington DC. Since then, the event has grown to become many things to many peoples: an iterative process of sharpening our analyses, vision and actions; a watershed moment that reinvigorates participants’ feminisms and energizes their organizing; and a political home for women human rights defenders to find sanctuary and solidarity.
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Love letter to Feminist Movements #4
To my beloved feminists living with HIV,

We’ve been together for over 20 years and how deeply I’ve treasured your love and support. It is interesting to think that you too are a similar age to AWID - both trying to figure out how to engage and support the community on a similar timeline. To the mothers in the movement, your leadership and guidance has been unmatched. I think of Prudence Mabele, Kate Thompson, Darien Taylor, Patricia Perez, Martha Tholanah, Deloris Dockery, Iris De La Cruise, Doris Peltier, Cecilia Chung and so many more. While not perfect (as none of us are), you always put your community first and champion the inclusion of ALL women living with HIV in feminist spaces.
I love the way you have held me when no one else has been able to, but more importantly how we hold each other. While you understand stigma, discrimination, violence and pain, you also understand joy, love and forgiveness. As feminists living with HIV, we are glorious and powerful in our intersectionality. We understand that feminism includes and is led by communities - our Black, Brown and Indigenous sisters, communities who are trans and gender diverse, sex workers, queer/lesbian, those who have been incarcerated, and those who use drugs - as set out in the GIPA (Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV) principles. Your feminism is all encompassing. We talk about the hard issues and about criminalized communities, because as people living with HIV, we ourselves are criminalized.
I would be remiss if I didn’t send special love to the young women living with HIV, the heartbeat of the movement. I see you Kia Lebejia, Keren Dunaway, Liz Onyango, Faith Ona, Sara Thapa Maga, Doreen Moraa, Yana Panfilova and millions of others incredible activists living with HIV. You are the power that will continue to propel us forward and allow us to be seen as important in mainstream feminst movements. Thank you for taking our movement further to ALWAYS include trans and gender diverse folks, to talk about the links between climate change and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
I love, love, love, love you so much. For better or for worse, let’s move forward together because this is our community - this is my community.
With love,
Jessica Whitbread
Snippet - CSW68 - Responding to Anti-rights - FR
Répondre aux évolutions antidroits
in Multilateral and Regional Spaces
✉️ Sur invitation uniquement
📅Mardi 12 mars
🕒14 h - 15 h 30 HNE
Organisateur : Consortium de l'Observatoire sur l'universalité des droits (OURs)
🏢Blue Gallery, 222 E 46th St, New York
Snippet FEA Carmen Silva (FR)
Ocupação 9 de Julho
Lorsque vous arriverez au centre-ville de São Paulo, vous verrez le bâtiment Ocupação 9 de Julho (Occupation de l’Avenue du 9 Juillet), un espace culturel et un site important dans la lutte pour le logement social.
C'est le travail du Mouvement des Travailleur·euses Sans-Abri (Movimento dos Sem-Teto do Centro, MSTC), un mouvement de plus de 2000 personnes qui agit dans le centre-ville et convertit les espaces abandonnés en logements pour les travailleur·euses à faible revenu, les enfants, femmes, adultes, personnes âgées, migrant·e·s et réfugié·e·s. Dans ce bâtiment en particulier, 122 familles sont nourries et logées.
Carta de amor a los movimientos feministas #6
Sobre el amor por un movimiento

¿Cómo comienza un movimiento?
los fantasmas nos expulsan de una casa, una familia, y una nación
llegamos fatigadas a un espacio (a veces un domicilio real) pero fundamentalmente a un estado de ser
precedidas por una estrella fugaz
quizás nuestra llegada no está acompañada por la fatiga,
quizás está acompañada por el miedo
quizás nuestra llegada no está acompañada por el miedo
quizás está acompañada por la rabia
ante cuestiones que siguen repitiéndose:
una puñalada en el corazón (léase pena)
una bala en la espalda (léase traición)
desapariciones forzadas
cuerpos sentenciados por el matrimonio, la desfiguración y la fatiga crónica,
sin embargo, llegamos, nos reunimos, susurramos, hablamos y lloramos.
Así es como nuestros movimientos comienzan cuando llegamos unas a otras
Nos convertimos en semillas,
Así es como nuestros movimientos comienzan cuando nos plantamos unas a otras
Convirtiéndonos en flores, a veces solo espinas, a veces frutas,
somos el oasis de las otras
para cantar por las batallas
para preparar remedios
para ubicar los rostros de nuestras amantes, la forma de sus sonrisas, el sonido de su risa
el secreto de convertir los silencios en lenguaje
las detalladas instrucciones de las brujas
nuestro movimiento es para todas nosotras,
cuando llegamos como semillas con el propósito de florecer.
Sara AbuGhazal
www.badiya.blog
Snippet - CSW68 - Follow Socials - EN
Follow us!
Through in-person events, lives on our socials, an exhibit booth and more; we are showing up to convene, amplify and support the voices and participation of our members, partners and allies.
Together we will Reclaim Feminist Power by uplifting feminist alternatives and visions around economies that center collective systems of care and nurture both the planet and people.
Follow us on social media for more details on how to participate! Be part of the conversations using the hashtags #AWIDatCSW68 and #ReclaimFeministPower.
Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | X (Twitter)
Snippet FEA ASOM (EN)
Association of Afro-Descendant Women of the Northern Cauca
Black women community organizing in the Cauca Valley in Colombia can be traced back to the country's colonial past, which is marked by the racism, patriarchy, and capitalism that sustained slavery as a means to exploit the region’s rich soils. These organizers are the heroines of a broad movement for black autonomy - one that fights for the sustainable use of the region's forests and natural resources as vital to their culture and livelihood.
For 25 years, the Association of Afro-Descendant Women of the Northern Cauca (Asociación de Mujeres Afrodescendientes del Norte del Cauca, ASOM) has been dedicated to bringing power to Afro-Colombian women’s organizing in northern Cauca.
They became established in 1997 as a response to ongoing human rights violations, the absence of public policies, inadequate management of natural resources, and the lack of opportunities for women in the territory.
They have forged the struggle to secure ethnic-territorial rights, to end violence against women, and gain recognition of women’s roles change-making peace-building in Colombia.
Matilde Lindo Crisanto
We Are the Ones We Have been Waiting For!
We’re beginning a new year--2023. COVID-19 continues to infect and re-infect many, many people around the world. We are witnessing the resurgence of right-wing and fascist governments, even in places we may not have expected like Sweden. War, armed conflict, and dramatic increase in militarization, militarism, and military spending are enabling the unbridled capital accumulation by the few, with participation of seemingly “strange” alliances locking arms, both visibly and invisibly, where economic and political elites of the Global North and Global South are benefitting beyond our wildest imagination. In the meanwhile, our people and the natural environment pay enormous costs and suffer all the expected and unexpected consequences.
As all of you and all of us at AWID know, feminists in multiple movements around the world are resisting and organizing against multiple faces of tyranny, creating alternative structures, implementing grassroots strategies, and building transnational alliances. We are generating joy, inspiring one another, singing, and dancing within and against the prevailing culture of killing and cynicism that seems to have engulfed so much of the world.
We--Staff and Board--of AWID are prepared and inspired more than ever before to face challenges by strengthening our relationships with our members and organizational partners, meeting and getting to know those who we are yet to meet and do what we do best: support the global feminist movements. Although we were sad facing the departures of our beloved former Co-Eds Cindy and Hakima, our wonderful new Co-EDS Faye and Inna along with committed and creative staff have embraced the moment that encapsulates both opportunities and threats.
For sure, all of us at AWID and all our movement folks know: As the Caribbean US poet and activist June Jordan wrote to the South African women activists during the height of the apartheid regime, “We are the ones we have been waiting for”!
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To share your lived experience with mobilizing funding for your organizing
Snippet FEA Mano Cambiada (ES)

MANO CAMBIADA
Término de las comunidades negras del Norte del Cauca para la minga, el trabajo colaborativo en fincas, basado en el apoyo mutuo y la solidaridad.
Natalia Estemirova
Who can fund my women’s rights organizing?
Our funder database is currently under revision. We know feminists still need and deserve more and better resources!
Please join our mailing list to stay informe about this update.
You can also become a member and find and create connections with feminists around the world.
Featured
Beyond Investing in Women and Girls
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L’enquête est disponible en français, anglais, arabe, espagnol, portugais et russe!
Snippet FEA Environments Of Shelter (FR)
Metzineres fournit les types de soutien suivants, connus sous le nom de
Environnements d'abri :
Nuala Fennell
Une stratégie, un marché et de nouvelles voix : les femmes autochtones et les forums de l'AWID

Le Forum a été un espace clé pour le Mouvement des femmes autochtones (Indigenous Women’s Movement, IWM) dans son rapport au féminisme. Aux Forums de l’AWID, elles ont appliqué la même stratégie que celle utilisée pour les Nations Unies. Au cours de ce processus, les deux mouvements ont été transformés : de nouvelles voix et questions ont émergé au sein de l’IWM, et les féministes ont commencé à changer leurs discours et leurs pratiques autour des droits fonciers et de la spiritualité, elles ont mieux compris les droits collectifs et ont inclus l’IWM dans leurs événements et leurs programmes. Mónica Alemán et María Manuela Sequeira, de l’IWM, nous ont raconté cette histoire.
Dans leur propre voix : regardez l'interview de María Manuela Sequeira & Mónica Alemán
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The full “Where is the Money for Feminist Organizing” report will be published in 2026.
To learn more how AWID has been shining a light on money for and against feminist movements check out the work of our Resourcing Feminist Movements Initiative here.