Year: 2018
Funding Feminist Futures
Funding Feminist Futures
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Women’s rights and feminist movements in Africa received a boost this week. On a visit to Sierra Leone, the Canadian Minister of International Development, Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced a $7 million (CAD) partnership with the African Women’s Development Fund, as part of the Canadian government’s recently announced $150 million ‘Women’s Voice and Leadership’ initiative.
At a meeting in Freetown on 14 August 2018, with women’s rights and peace and security civil society organisations, Minister Bibeau stated that in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, ‘women are not seen as victims but as survivors and agents of change’. As such, AWDF is excited to be a part of the Voice and Leadership initiative, with an initial focus on transnational and regional activity.
Spanning five years, this project will allow AWDF and African women’s rights organisations to further strengthen their impact on the achievement of women’s rights and social justice through greater support, profile and networking of African women’s voices, participation and leadership. This initiative will join with other AWDF work, supporting African women’s rights organisations and movements through grantmaking, technical assistance, advocacy and knowledge generation.
Watch for further information about this initiative in the near future.[/tp]
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Dans le cadre de la récente annonce du gouvernement canadien de consacrer 150 millions de dollars à sa nouvelle initiative sur « la voix et le leadership des femmes », l’honorable Marie-Claude Bibeau, ministre du Développement international, en visite en Sierra Leone a annoncé un financement de 7 millions de dollars en faveur du Fonds Africain pour le Développement de la Femme (AWDF). Cette annonce vient booster les efforts des organisations de défense des droits des femmes et des mouvements féministes en Afrique.
Le 14 août 2018, lors d’une rencontre avec les représentants des organisations de femmes, de la société civile, et celles œuvrant pour la paix et la sécurité en Sierra Leone, Freetown, la ministre Bibeau a déclaré que dans la Politique d’Aide Internationale Féministe du Canada «les femmes ne sont pas considérées comme des victimes mais comme des survivantes et des agents du changement». AWDF est donc ravi de contribuer à la mise en œuvre du projet Voix et Leadership, tout en se focalisant sur les activités transnationales et régionales.
Couvrant une période de cinq ans, ce projet permettra à l’AWDF ainsi qu’aux organisations de défense des droits des femmes de renforcer leur impact pour le respect des droits des femmes et l’atteinte de la justice sociale à travers le soutien, le réseautage et l’amplification des voix, de la participation et du leadership des femmes africaines. Ce projet s’ajoutera aux autres projets de l’AWDF consacrés à soutenir les organisations de défense des droits des femmes et des mouvements féministes par l’octroi des subventions, le renforcement des capacités, le plaidoyer et la gestion des connaissances.
Consultez souvent notre site web pour de plus amples informations sur cette initiative.[/tp]
Decolonise The Internet: Solidarity Is More than Just A Buzzword.
Decolonise The Internet: Solidarity Is More than Just A Buzzword.
By: Maame Akua Kyerewaa-Marfo
The fast pace of technology has often made it synonymous with the concept of progress. New Technological developments often came with the presumption of neutrality. They were widely thought of not to have the the weaknesses of human prejudice, just simple–clean–algorithms. Technology could be–at least conceptually–blissfully neutral. However in its implementation it became clear that technological developments often mirrored the people doing the developing and left out, inadvertently or not, those who lacked the privilege often needed to gain the skills necessary to claim digital real estate. The Decolonising the Internet conference, held in Cape Town, wanted to re-imagine an internet where the real estate was owned by all. An internet where everyone had a voice, an opinion and a story.
Decolonising the Internet was a conference organised by Whose Knowledge? as a precursor to WIKIMANIA 2018, the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual conference. Each WIKIMANIA brings together volunteers and free knowledge leaders to celebrate all the various free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. This year’s theme– “Bridging knowledge gaps: the Ubuntu way forward,” focused on the spaces and moments that Wikipedia and all of the other free knowledge products of the Wikimedia foundation, had missed. As an organisation that already does the work of reconstructing the internet so that more of it’s users are included within it’s landscape, Whose Knowledge?’s two day, Decolonizing the Internet pre-conference provided a lens by which to interpret and untangle the WIKIMANIA conference. They created a space where participants could participate in this reconstruction and re-imagining of an internet which would truly belong to everyone.
The first day focused on imagining. What would it truly mean to rethink the internet–and how could all of the different voices in the room find a space in this collective re-imagining? What did it mean to be in a room full of people doing interesting and often times revolutionary work in spaces that the western world normally wouldn’t consider in its construction of the digital landscape? What would this reclaiming of space look like? The answers to these questions had a wide range, from new ways of archiving information and new knowledge systems to rethinking the concepts of labeling that are prevalent within library systems and how even those categorisations can be limiting and exclusionary. The first day served as a way of getting participants to both conceptualise the internet and free knowledge spaces they want to see, and start the difficult work of imagining themselves within those landscapes.
The second day focused on the doing– now that we had re-imagined wild– important futures. How could we transform the spaces we occupy now to usher them in? For some the answer was to look at the landscape of Wikimania–and Wikipedia itself. How could we get rid of common limitations that we had experienced trying to populate the space with information from marginalised communities? What were the first steps to our glorious, liberated, decolonised digital future in a space that prides itself on being accessible to all? How could we, in our own ways, ensure that it is? Several different answers sprang up in response to this question and the day was spent working out our places and our starting points. The focus on small, manageable starting points meant that the follow up actions were simple–doable things that linked clearly to our overall goal. We would be doing something small–but tangible and foundational like exploring the possibility of a feminist commons, to becoming more involved in editing and updating Wikipedia.
Over the next few days of WIKIMANIA itself, it became clear how important the space offered by Decolonising the Internet was. It allowed people working in different ways to link hands in a space where knowledge was de-centralised. This meant that for those who had been in the bean bag filled break away rooms there was a lens, an action plan and a reason to engage, beyond a passion for free knowledge. It allowed inputs to be important and poignant, and though the overall achievements of that space are hard to map now– the connections between people doing incredible work, who were pushing for more space for marginalised knowledge were powerful, tangible things.
Whose Knowledge called into question the rethinking of the cannon. An internet for all would mean rethinking concepts, categories, what is considered a source and who is considered an authority. Although Wikipedia questions these tenets by its simple existence– it was clear from both the conversations and the theme for this years WIKIMANIA that this question, this probing, this revolution is incomplete. Whose Knowledge took that theme and that questioning further, and provided a space of liberation. One were we could deconstruct and reconstruct.
Whose Knowledge provided not only space to question and imagine– but also incredible people to do this important imagining with.
For more information on Whose Knowledge please follow this LINK.