JASS at the AWID Forum

November 2008, Cape Town, South Africa

JASS had a strong and visible presence at the AWID (Association for Women's Rights in Development) Forum held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2008. JASS core team leaders Nani Zulminarni (Indonesia) and Martha Tholanah (Zimbabwe) were featured in the third opening plenary on the "Context of Our Work," and JASS board Co-chair Srilatha Batliwala and JASS Southern Africa activist Sindi Blose (South Africa) closed the forum on the final plenary. JASS staff and allies participated on and led half a dozen workshops and presentations, JASS videos were a big hit, and the JASS booth was the heart of the ballroom with friends, music, and space for sharing and networking.

JASS Videos screened during the AWID Forum

Miriam Banda interviewed at the AWID Forum

JASS at AWID Photo Gallery

Lisa VeneKlasen's Presentation on Power, Money, Sex, Technology, & Stigma: How women's movements can transform the HIV/AIDS agenda

JASS Sessions at AWID

Broadening African women's movements? - Experiences from women living with and working on HIV&AIDS! In this session coordinated and presented by JASS Southern Africa allies, women living with and working on HIV&AIDS share some of their experiences of movement building.  The group will critically discuss their complex relationships with the feminist movement, HIV movements and communities of women living with HIV&AIDS.  The panel will also highlight challenges, gaps and possibilities to strengthen their leadership, organising, communications and advocacy capacity to advance the issues and agendas of women living with HIV.  Watch the Videos
Women Crossing the Line: A Solidarity, Learning and Action Strategy (Observatorios de la Trasgresión Feminista) In this workshop co-coordinated by the Petateras, Radio Feminista and JASS, the Petateras - key JASS Mesoamerican allies – will discuss this innovative action-strategy that mobilizes alternative media, physical and virtual solidarity to increase women’s visibility and impact at critical political moments. Organizers of the Observatorios de la Trasgresión Feminista, held in Nicaragua, Mexico and Costa Rica, will share lessons and insights about feminist movement-building garnered from these innovative experiences.  Watch the Video
Techies to Politicos Sunday, November 16: 4:30-6:00pm Lisa Veneklasen, Nani Zulminarni, Sindi Blose, Patience Mandishona, Ana Luisa Ahern Five activists from 4 different countries take participants through a mini power-analysis exercise, as an experiential illustration of the methodology underlying JASS' multi-regional feminist movement-building initiative. Unlike the purely technical path that has tended to dissipate women’s change efforts over the past decade, this approach re-politicizes thinking, strategies and action.
Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect This session will explore a new book, "Women, Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect", and the play and movement building process based on it. JASS close ally and Co-coordinator of Radio Feminista, Maria Suarez Toro (the author), JASS Co-founder and Board member Valerie Miller (International Advisory Group of Wings of the Butterfly) and Ailyn Morera (the play's director and script writer) will use music, video, metaphor and storytelling, examining feminist popular education methodologies of "resonance", 'butterfly effect,' and artistic expression that connects us beyond language.
Power! Money! Sex! Technology! Stigma! How women's movements can transform the HIV/AIDS agenda Fernanda Hopenhaym, Sipho Mthathi, Michele Knab, Lisa Veneklasen, Executive Director of JASS, Sindi Blose, JASS Southern Africa ally This session, which uses the JASS Southern Africa framework and video as it’s core outline, will look at HIV/AIDS from the lens of power and inequality in order to define the many ways that this urgent challenge facing women presents opportunities for movement-building and energizing women's rights agendas. This workshop will provide a space to explore practically what women's movement can do differently to bring the HIV/AIDS agenda and positive women's voice into the heart of more compelling women's rights strategies for change on this important agenda and many others.  This session will combine an interactive panel, a multimedia presentation and small group work. The panel, including a synthesis of key highlights from many of the other HIV/AIDS workshops at the Forum, will frame the analysis and strategy work that will be done in small groups and at the end, shared in plenary. Watch the Video See the PowerPoint presentation
Third Plenary: The Contexts of our Organizing Featuring Joanna Kerr, JASS Advisor, as the plenary moderator and Nani Zulminarni, Co- Coordinator for JASS South East Asia regional team, as a plenary speaker. Movements do not take shape in some neutral space—around the world, women are organizing for their rights in spite of incredibly adverse contexts: rising religious fundamentalisms, growing economic inequality and poverty, militarization and conflict, authoritarian regimes and growing backlash against women’s rights, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. This dynamic plenary will ground our discussion of movements in the concrete contexts where women are working and will focus on the questions of how we organize. More
Fourth Plenary: The Future of Movements Srilatha Batliwala, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), India Aninha Adeve, Jovens Feministas de Sao Paulo, Brazil Sindi Blose, Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa After four intense and thought-provoking days, how to make sense of what we have learned and unlearned? What new ideas have emerged to shape our thinking and practice when we leave the forum? Our brave speakers will share the key themes, bold insights and new ideas that resonated with them throughout these days. They will set our sights on the path ahead and how we carry this momentum back to our sisters, our organizations and our communities as we build stronger movements for women’s rights. More

 

 

JASS at the AWID Forum 2005

How does change happen? JASS' Executive Director, Lisa VeneKlasen, was a part of the AWID Forum's International Planning Committee and spoke in the final plenary as a wrap-up on the Forum's theme "How does change happen?" Lisa highlighted the "hows" of change, emphasizing the importance of strategies that build transformative forms of power: power within, power to, and power with. See a copy of her presentation here.

Where's the Money for Women's Rights? Cindy Clark and Lisa VeneKlasen of Just Associates participated in the AWID Funders Forum. Cindy presented the results of the research JASS conducted for AWID, looking at trends in funding for women's rights organizations in the past decade and highlighting some of the factors influencing those trends as well as ideas about how to leverage greater resources for women's rights. Lisa then structured an animated conversation with the diverse donors participating in the session.

Feminist Timelines: Just Associates designed a dynamic participatory process for engaging Forum participants in "Remembering and Reclaiming Change: Feminist Timelines for Better Futures." Participants divided into 9 regional groups, charting key milestones, gains and losses for women's rights over the last four decades.

Your Net, My Work: Pitfalls and lessons learned from coalitions, alliances and networks at regional, national and international levels. Networks are a fact of life in women's rights advocacy. They offer vital linkages, alliances and communication -- without which we are unable to tap and wield the extraordinary power of our numbers to advance our agendas and voices. But, our differences -- as people, as leaders and as organizations -- can be as powerful as our common interests. How can we understand and negotiate differences to build and consolidate the coordination we need for clout, credibility and size? How can we negotiate and coordinate our key differences in terms of size, style, funding, and more to maximise our connections and minimise the tensions caused by difference? This workshop explores these challenges through the experiences of four women's rights advocates with many years experience in the joys and pains of networking. (See workshop report)

Strategic Opportunity or Black Hole? Assessing Policy Spaces to Advance Women's Rights. Sustained pressure from women's rights and other civil society groups has led to the opening up of innumerable opportunities for participation in official policy discussions with national governments, multilateral institutions, and other powerful players. However, the agendas in these spaces are often preset or circumscribed in ways that principally serve to legitimise the institution's prior goals, and rarely offer us any real opportunities to advance a women's rights agenda and analysis on key policy issues. We will debate the pros and cons of engaging in some of the primary spaces that consume much of the time and energy of women's rights activists (eg MDGs, PRSPs, miscellaneous IFI consultations, Beijing +10, World Social Forum, and GCAP). (See workshop report)

Claiming Space for Women's Rights in Mixed Organizations and Movements. How does change happen for women's rights within mixed-sex organisations and movements? Join panellists as they share their stories and experiences of putting women's rights at the centre of movements and organisations for social justice. Based on the case studies and research for an ActionAid initiative, coordinated by Just Associates, this interactive session reflects on contributors' key insights, challenges and the lessons learned in furthering women's rights in spaces not exclusively for this purpose. This session will be valuable to those working inside mixed organisations, or for those who are trying to influence them.

Learning for a Change: Challenges of Measuring and Assessing Equality Gains (and Losses). After a three-year action research initiative to evaluate social change and advocacy efforts to transform power relations, activists, advisors and team members will reflect on how best to measure and assess change efforts. How do we measure change in an empowering way and how do we apply this learning to our actions? This panel will discuss the frameworks, approaches and questions from their work on power, change and strategy, and will ask participants to build knowledge that goes beyond the superficial listing of best practices to explore the dynamics of power, change and strategy.

Mobilising More Resources for Women's Rights Work: A Strategy Session. This year, AWID worked with Just Associates to carry out an action-research initiative called 'Where is the Money for Women's Rights Work?' The initiative identified key trends and changes in funding for women's rights over the past ten years. Women organisers and activists discussed strategies and alliances with funders in dialogues on how to develop strategies and alliances to increase the amount and quality of funding available to support women's rights work in different regions of the world. This interactive session will present the ideas and strategies for mobilising more resources for women's rights that emerged from this initiative. It will provide participants with a space to analyse these strategies, build on them and brainstorm new ones.

 

JASS (Just Associates)
info@justassociates.org