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

Young Feminist Activism

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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 - WITM Our objectives - EN

Our research objectives

1

Provide AWID members, movement partners and funders with an updated, powerful, evidence-based, and action-oriented analysis of the resourcing realities of feminist movements and current state of the feminist funding ecosystem.

2

Identify and demonstrate opportunities to shift more and better funding for feminist organizing, expose false solutions and disrupt trends that make funding miss and/or move against gender justice and intersectional feminist agendas.

3

Articulate feminist visions, proposals and agendas for resourcing justice.

Snippet FEA Get Involved 1 (FR)

ENGAGEZ-VOUS!

Vous pouvez suivre le travail de ces collectifs sur les réseaux sociaux et sites internet suivant:

Why should I consider responding to the survey?

There are many reasons why your response to the WITM survey matters. The survey offers the opportunity to share your lived experience of mobilizing funding to support your organizing; claim your power as an expert on how money moves and who it reaches; and contribute to collective and consistent advocacy to funders moving more and better funding. Over the last two decades, AWID’s WITM research has proven to be a key resource for activists and funders. We wholeheartedly invite you to join us in its third iteration to highlight the actual state of resourcing, challenge false solutions, and point out how funding must change for movements to thrive and meet the complex challenges of our times.

Snippet FEA EoS The Cover (FR)

Illustration of a pink human in white underwear doing a power pose

La puissante
Autoprotection et renforcement

En nuestro caso, reorientamos dinero a nuestros socios beneficiarios y nos identificamos como fondo de mujeres/feminista, ¿deberíamos responder la encuesta?

No. Valoramos muchísimo su trabajo, pero no estamos buscando respuestas de fondos de mujeres/feministas por el momento. Alentamos a compartir la encuesta con sus socios beneficiarios y con sus redes feministas.

Snippet FEA Ecofeminism (EN)

WEST AFRICA

NOUS SOMMES LA SOLUTION
We are the Solution

ECOFEMINISM:

Respect for all we have around us

Puis-je accéder à l’enquête et répondre aux questions depuis mon téléphone?

Oui, l’enquête est accessible depuis les téléphones intelligents.

Snippet FEA Mariama Sonko (EN)

This is Mariama Sonko, an inspiring small-scale rural farmer, eco-feminist and a woman human rights defender.

She lives in Niaguiss, a town in the southwest of Senegal. Growing up in a family and community of rural farmers, she witnessed the essential role of women in food production and seed preservation from a very early age, while also being immersed in the rhythms and working of the land. Mariama has been defending local agricultural knowledge and peasant practices since the 1990s. As a mother of five children, the food she grows herself is the main source of sustenance for her family.

She is currently the president of “Nous Sommes la Solution'' and is involved in promoting agroecological practices and family farming, encouraging food sovereignty, biodiversity and farmer seed preservation, and demanding equitable access to resources and land for women across West Africa.

Source: AWID’s Feminist Realities Festival Crear | Résister | Transform - Day 2/ 2ème jour/ 2º día

Should I do any preparation to respond to the survey?

As the WITM survey is focused on resourcing realities for feminist organizations, most questions ask about your group’s funding between 2021–2023. You will need to have this information with you to fill out the survey (e.g., your annual budgets and key sources of funding).

Snippet FEA Objectives NSS Advocacy (EN)

INCIDENCIA POLITICA

Yellow circle with illustration of a brown woman with a white t-shirt holding a blue loudspeaker.
Influir en tomas de decisiones políticas y promover un acceso más equitativo a la tierra para las mujeres que trabajan en la agricultura