None On Record

Special Focus

AWID is an international, feminist, membership organisation committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights

Young Feminist Activism

Read in: English French Spanish

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

Type

Snippet - CSW69 - Feminist Solidarity Space 12 - ES

Espacio de solidaridad feminista

✉️ Requiere inscripción previa para grandes grupos. Entrada libre para grupos reducidos. Reserven aquí

📅 Miércoles 12 de marzo de 2025
🕒 de 02:00 a 04:00 p.m., EST
🏢 Chef's Kitchen Loft with Terrace, 216 East 45th St 13th Floor, New York 

Organiza: AWID

Devenir membre

Devenir membre

En rejoignant l’AWID, vous intégrez l’organisation féministe mondiale, un pouvoir collectif qui se fonde sur la solidarité et puise ses racines dans le travail entre les mouvements.

L’adhesion a titre individuel

L’adhesion Organisationnelle

FRMag - Dieula and the Black Dolls

Dieula and the Black Dolls

by Ana María Belique

The Naranjo Batey community is far from the city, but it’s full of hard-working people brimming with enthusiasm. A girl named Dieula lived there. (...)

Read

< artwork: “Fury” by Diana Manilla Arroyo

Sarah Maldoror

Read in: English French Spanish
Category
Civil & Political Rights
Region
Europe
Date of birth
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Natural

“I’m no adherent to the concept of the ‘Third World’. I make films so that people - no matter what race or color they are - can understand them. For me there are only exploiters and the exploited, that’s all. To make a film means to take a position.” - Sarah Maldoror 

Sarah Maldoror, a French filmmaker of West Indies descent, was a pioneer of Pan-African cinema. At the core of her work, she placed political concerns along with her longstanding involvement in decolonization movements.

Her groundbreaking film and “revolutionary picture” Sambizanga (1972) follows Angolan militants’ anti-colonial liberation struggle, as well as captures a woman’s perspective in a historical moment she finds herself in. 

“For many African filmmakers, cinema is a revolutionary tool, a political education to raise consciousness. It is inscribed in the evolution of a Third Cinema striving to decolonize thought and advocate radical changes in society.” - Sarah Maldoror

Throughout her career, Sarah - together with a number of African and Caribbean artists - co-founded (1956) the first Black theatre troupe in France. She made around 40 films, comprising important documentaries that amplify the lives and work of black artists, including her friend and poet Aimé Césaire who wrote to her: 

“To Sarah Maldo
who, a camera in hand,
fights oppression, alienation
and flies in the face
of human bullshit.”

Sarah was also committed to giving African women more ownership of the filmmaking process. In an interview, she pointed out: 

"African women must be everywhere. They must be in the images, behind the camera, in the editing room and involved in every stage of the making of a film. They must be the ones to talk about their problems." 

Sarah left an incredibly powerful legacy to be carried forward. 

Born 19 July 1929, Sarah passed away on 13 April 2020 from complications of the coronavirus.

Watch Sambizanga and read a film review in a 1973 New York Times article
 

Love letter to Feminist Movements #4

To my beloved feminists living with HIV,

Scrapbook envelopes that say Love Letters to Feminist Movements. The top envelope says Love letters to feminist movements from Jessica Whitbread

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 - Title WCFM Landing - EN

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

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

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).

MIRAR

María Digna Montero

Read in: English French Spanish
Category
Derechos económicos, sociales y culturales
Region
América Latina
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Asesinato

María Digna Montero fue una garífuna (afrodescendiente e indígena) defensora de la tierra e integrante de la Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), una organización de base que trabaja para proteger a las comunidades garífunas, sus derechos ancestrales, su cultura, sus recursos y su territorio.

María también enseñaba en la escuela local, e integraba el grupo de trabajo de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural de OFRANEH.

El 12 de octubre (Día de la Resistencia Indígena) de 2019, sujetos desconocidos le dispararon a María varias veces en el patio de su casa.

Fue una de las seis defensoras garífunas asesinadas entre septiembre y octubre de 2019 y, según OFRANEH, no hubo ninguna investigación de estos crímenes por parte de las autoridades. En un comunicado oficial, la organización también subrayó la conexión entre la violencia contra líderes garífunas y el incremento de las industrias extractivas que explotan los recursos naturales en sus comunidades, y definieron esta violencia como «parte de una estrategia de intimidación y de expulsión sistemática por parte del Estado de Honduras.»

«El recrudecimiento de la tensión y de los riesgos crecientes para la seguridad y derechos humanos de las lideresas en las comunidades y territorios ancestrales es producto del despojo, desplazamiento y criminalización hacia las comunidades, y de los mega proyectos extractivos que impulsa el Estado junto con las corporaciones nacionales e internacionales.» - Pronunciamiento de OFRANEH, 13 de octubre de 2019

Carta de amor a los movimientos feministas #6

Sobre el amor por un movimiento

Sobres de álbum de recortes, el de arriba dicen "Cartas de amor a los movimientos feministas". El sobre en la parte superior dice "De Sara AbuGhazal"

¿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 - WCFM getting the money we need - En

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 hereText-only version

Also available in Arabic

¿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.

Crear Resistar Snippet

Crear | Résister | Transform

Crear | Résister | Transform est fait pour vous et pour tou·te·s les superbes activistes féministes et de la justice sociale que nous connaissons. Rassemblons-nous pour partager nos stratégies de résistance, co-créer un peu de magie féministe, et transformer ce monde ensemble.

un festival dédié aux mouvements féministes !

Nilcéa Freire

Read in: English French Spanish
Category
Droits économiques, sociaux et culturels
Region
Amérique latine
Date of birth
Date of death / disappearance
Cause of death / disappearance

Maladie

Nilcéa Freire était une activiste, politicienne et universitaire brésilienne. Ardente défenseuse des droits des femmes et des minorités sous-représentées dans le pays, sa vie et son travail ont été marqués par une longue histoire de luttes et de victoires.

"Nous devons, tout en résistant, continuer à chercher à progresser, et ce que nous pouvons accomplir actuellement, je pense que nous le devons à la fantastique organisation des jeunes femmes blanches, et surtout des femmes noires, dans toutes les capitales d’États et les grandes villes brésiliennes.” - Nilcéa Freire

En 1999, elle est devenue la première femme à occuper le poste de doyenne de l'université d'État de Rio de Janeiro. Elle y a dirigé la mise en œuvre de la première politique d'action positive pour les étudiant·e·s des écoles publiques, demandant au sein d’une école publique que des places soient spécifiquement réservées aux étudiant·e·s noir·e·s à faible revenu. Ce système a été adopté dans des dizaines d'autres universités publiques. 

Quelques années plus tard, Nilcéa dirigea le Secrétariat spécial des politiques pour les femmes sous le gouvernement de l'ancien président Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. C’est à ce titre qu’elle conduisit la première Conférence nationale des femmes. Plus de 12 000 femmes de tout le pays y participèrent et le résultat de ce travail collectif fut incorporé dans le Plan national des politiques pour les femmes. 

Son engagement envers les femmes, les Afro-Brésilien·ne·s et les populations autochtones se reflète aussi fortement dans son travail de défense de leurs droits, qu’elle a mené dans le cadre des initiatives du bureau de la Fondation Ford du Brésil, dont elle était la directrice régionale. 

L’activiste féministe Manoela Miklos a dit de Nilcéa qu'elle était "une femme sans égal·e".

Nilcéa s’est éteinte à Rio de Janeiro à l'âge de 66 ans, le 29 décembre 2019, des suites d’un cancer.

"Je n’ai pas de mots face à l’annonce de la mort de notre chère Nilcéa Freire. Il m’est trop triste de savoir qu’elle est partie si tôt. Elle s’est toujours rangée du côté de celleux qui ne tolèrent pas les injustices de ce monde. Elle était la ministre des femmes, sans cesse engagée dans la cause féministe. Elle nous manquera beaucoup!” - Jandira Feghali, Federal Deputy

Retrouvez sur YouTube la féministe brésilienne Nilcea Freire et pourquoi il importe de se montrer solidaires avec le Brésil

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”!

Snippet - WITM Infographic annual budget 2 in 4- EN

Ever Wondered What Budgets for Feminist  Organizations Look Like?

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

 

En quoi ce Forum sera-t-il différent ?

Avec jusqu'à 2 500 participant·e·s sur place et 3 000 participant·e·s virtuel·e·s/hybrides, il s'agira du plus grand Forum de l'AWID jamais organisé. Nous envisageons de mettre en place de multiples espaces qui vous permettront d'établir des liens significatifs, d'apprendre, d'échanger, d'avoir des échanges stratégiques, de guérir et de fêter. C'est la première fois que nous nous réunissons dans cet espace depuis la pandémie, et nous brûlons d’impatience.