About JASS

Mission

JASS is committed to
strengthening women’s voice,
visibility, and collective organizing power
to create a just and sustainable world for all.

A global community of justice activists, scholars and popular educators in more than 30 countries worldwide, JASS works from a feminist perspective to transform norms, institutions, policies and decision-making processes in both public and private spaces of power. Our shared analysis and strategies are shaped by an intersectional perspective on power, integrating race, class, sexuality, location and other factors.

Aims

• Strengthening activist leadership with women from all backgrounds and walks of life
• Expanding grassroots organizing linked to mobilization and advocacy
• Forging new alliances and agendas between women from distinct locations, sectors, movements, ages, ethnicities and backgrounds
• Making women leaders and feminist messages more visible and appealing to the broader public (challenging prejudice, taboos and stigma)
• Increasing women’s access to/use of resources, rights and freedoms

Context & Challenges

As we analyze this particular moment in history, particular forces and dynamics drive JASS’ strategies.

• Fundamentalist ideologies are using state power and resources to close democratic space and reverse women's rights gains.
• The widening inequality gap forces many women to focus on survival needs and limits opportunities for democratic participation.
• The capacity of governments to ensure access to justice and provide a basic safety net is shrinking.
• Corporate globalization promotes western, consumer culture and fuels backlash.
• Citizens face growing violence and fear; organized crime and gangs; and lawlessness.
• With the institutionalization of civil society (“NGO-ization”), citizen campaigns focus on branding and turf battles rather than promoting justice.
• Technical solutions have been over-emphasized, promising quick fixes to complex social problems.
• Women’s and other social movements have been fragmented and demobilized.

Our conclusion:

There are few places in the world where women can exercise their rights as individuals fully. Our freedoms are shrinking. We must organize and mobilize the power of our numbers for safety, visibility and influence, and to resist, question and transform ideologies of exploitation and oppression.

History

JASS was founded in 2002 by a group of long-time colleagues from 12 countries connected by common political struggles, over decades in some cases. A uniquely agile global network of respected human rights activists, community organizers, popular educators and scholars, the organization is known for pioneering social justice and women’s rights education, training, strategies and action-research, and for accessible how-to materials about political and social change. Innovative programs through our history combine the tried-and-tested local to global activism of our network, a long history of strong political and personal relationships, and opportunities presented by evolving communications. Within feminist movements and social justice struggles, JASS uses our many connections to participate as an activist; from the outside, JASS takes the part of strategist and “honest broker,” facilitating connections at local, national and regional levels.