Before Indonesia’s elections, PESADA and JASS Southeast Asia held political education workshops on women’s political rights on the North Sumatran island of Nias, emphasizing the importance of voting women onto the Legislative Council. JASS’ Niken Lestari also joined actions to raise women’s political awareness through a blog in Indonesian and a Vote Women! campaign that included a TV talk show.
Indonesia Vote Women
Before Indonesia’s elections, PESADA and JASS Southeast Asia held political education workshops on women’s political rights on the North Sumatran island of Nias, emphasizing the importance of voting women onto the Legislative Council. JASS’ Niken Lestari also joined actions to raise women’s political awareness through a blog in Indonesian and a Vote Women! campaign that included a TV talk show.
Young Timorese Feminist Leader
In January 2009, Yasinta das Regras became director of Rede Feto Timor Leste – a confederation of 18 women’s organizations nationwide. “My previous organization didn’t focus on women’s issues. But at JASS workshops, I learned about feminism and now my job is to promote gender equality.” Since 2007, JASS Southeast Asia has been building alliances between Timorese and Indonesian women, healing painful historical divisions.
Indonesian Feminists Spanning Generations
On June 15th, JASS Southeast Asia launched a new movement-building institute in Bogor. Chosen from 22
provinces in Indonesia, 25 mostly young women analyzed power from the personal to the national, tracked the history of women's organizing, and framed an agenda for making change. Joined by young leaders from previous JASS processes, they met with eight older, established feminists to discuss multigenerational movement-building – and to put it into practice at the same time.
Regional Movement Building in Parapat
Regional Movement Building Institute held in Parapat, North Sumatra, Indonesia, June 9-14th, 2008. Watch the incredible video documenting the voices of young feminist from Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand.
Villa Sahara of Indonesia
Villa Sahara of Indonesia has worked extensively as a field worker doing community organizing across many Indonesian provinces. She manages the implementation of the Women Legal Empowerment (WLE) program at the village level and coordinates with central level justice institutions, enabling the community to actively participate in every phase of development in their region. Involved in JASS since June 2008, she is interested in learning about the position of feminist movements in economic, social and political systems in order to build appropriate strategies.
Compiled by Niken Lestari, JASS Southeast Asia Program Associate, and Annie Holmes, JASS Knowledge Coordinator
In general, JASS sees our role as contributing to change; we don’t claim to cause it. But in certain moments, someone’s life can be transformed by a timely intervention. And that seems to be the case for Yasinta, a young activist from Timor Leste.
A group of young women from Indonesia and Timor Leste were invited to the first JASS movement-building institute in Southeast Asia (in Bogor, Indonesia, June 2007). Here, they shared a common language – Indonesian – and a common commitment to social justice, but also the complicated history of their two countries, as colonized and colonizer.
At this point, Yasinta worked with a large social justice group, La'o Hamutuk, and – as she stresses – had little knowledge of gender issues. At the end of the Bogor workshop, she commented, “it brought me new knowledge ... I am now able to understand more about women’s movements and young feminists, about power relations, and about LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender]. The experiences shared by other participants about their work have motivated me to continue my struggle for personal change and to support my friends who have less information about this, and to do awareness-raising in my own organization." >>continue
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