MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Hera organisation
HERA is based in Libya and was founded by the former members of Libya’s women’s national football team with the aim of developing and supporting girls and young women through sports. HERA uses football as an active learning tool to educate on issues of gender equality and discrimination, health and reconciliation. The group works in schools and with internally displaced persons in refugee camps and orphanages and aims to create sport spaces where girls can build strength, both physical and mental, to help face their daily realities. By acquiring the proper protection gear against Covid 19, the team is hoping to be able to resume with their activities and continue to provide their support to young women and girls.
L’Association Errahma des Handicapées Azilal
L’Association Errahma des Handicapées Azilal works with girls and young women with disabilities in the High Atlas Mountains region of Azilal to fight all kinds of discrimination and marginalisation practised against them. They work to safeguard their wellbeing and promote their integration in the economic and social fabric of Morocco. The quarantine due to Covid 19 led to their isolation and interrupted their communication with the outside world thus depriving them of opportunities for distance education and their access to basic services and rights. This requires Errahma to facilitate their access to the information world through social media platforms as a tool for learning and strengthening skills and capabilities, especially in the rural mountainous area in which they live in the absence of the minimum conditions for a decent for these disabled girls and young women.
The Creativity Salon
The Creativity Salon started in Bethlehem with a personal initiative in 2019 and aims at developing the creativity and art skills of girls in the local Palestinian community as well as creating opportunities for them to express and take part in the community activities. It also targets challenging and changing stereotypes about girls by developing their skills in writing and reading. They provide training about creative writing, hosting discussions of novels and well-known authors to speak about their experiences as well as round table discussions about poetry and training on designing magazines for girls. After COVID-19, all face to face activities with their beneficiaries have stopped which caused them to lose contact with them as many don't have internet access or computers so the team switched to online training for a few of them. Activities such as printing out their magazine was put on hold because all their financial resources went to Covid-19 related health care.
Toward a Better Tomorrow for Development and Empowerment
Toward a Better Tomorrow for Development and Empowerment is based in Jordan and it is focused on defending the rights of all groups of marginalised girls who are deprived from access to basic services such as education and public health. They aim to work through networking with the largest number of local community institutions: schools, health centres and associations. The team’s activities are set to develop and empower girls in the local community of Amman and El Mafraq. In light of Covid 19, their beneficiaries are deprived from access to communication hence subject to a high risk of violence and sexual exploitation. The crisis- especially with the closure of schools and social clubs- also threatens to erode any gains that have been made in consolidating the importance of education among adolescent girls and their families.
Domari Society for the Gypsies in Jerusalem
Domari Society for the Gypsies in Jerusalem is a non-profit organisation aims at combating the major issues facing the Domari Society of Gypsiescommunity such as severe discrimination, cultural marginalization and poverty. Their work focus is on empowerment, job training for Domari Gypsies women and education for Domari children with the aim to effectively contest discrimination and poverty through self-empowerment and achievement. In addition to poverty and low incomes, the global pandemic has left many Domari teenage mothers and young ladies jobless. With no access to government aid, the only income is through sales of their homemade crafts or low income jobs like housekeeping and gardening.
Bethlehem Queers
Bethlehem Queers in Palestine was born from the Inad Theater leadership program. It is an Instagram account that serves as the only online platform for the Palestinian LGBTQIA+ community. In Palestine, sexuality and gender identity are extremely taboo topics, and it is unsafe for young queer Palestinians to express their identities or even talk about them. Bethlehem Queers creates a safe space for queer Palestinian women who are marginalised to come together and communicate their experiences with sexuality and gender identity through sharing their stories, jokes, and different forms of art expression with each other safely away from hate and oppression.
FemiHub
FemiHub in Egypt was established with a mission of advocating for Female Independence Seekers’ (FIS) — young women who separate from their abusive families and seek geographical and financial independence. The group fights against the stereotypes related to girls' independence and uses the model of the sisterhood concept to demonstrate the limitless power of women-only communities. FemiHub mobilises the FISs to support each other finding appropriate and safe jobs and housing in addition to building a supporting community of FISs that is mainly based on the feminist solidarity as a core principle.
Feminist Diaries
Feminist Diaries, based in Occupied Palestine, is an intergenerational group of young women and girls who have many stories to share about their feminist realities. The group came together to highlight injustices and experiences that shape their world, one that holds little possibilities because of colonial oppression and militarization at one hand, and constructed patriarchy at the other. Equally important, Feminist Diaries provides an art-based perspective on the kind of feminist world that it imagines and seeks to co-create based on human rights and social justice.
Foras.ps
Foras.ps in Palestine is an online interactive platform that connects Palestinian women and men with local and international opportunities such as paid and voluntary employment, training and internships, and access to funding, grants and scholarships. We will be adapting technology to maximize this process and make it more efficient for opportunity providers and seekers. The current group aims to increase the employment rate for young women in Palestine. Foras.ps provides support to women applying for opportunities through workshops and interactive sessions which improve their application-writing skills, their employment prospects and ultimately their life conditions.
Haven For Artists
Haven for Artists (HFA) based in Beirut, Lebanon, is an all-inclusive arts organisation founded in 2011 by a group of LGBTQIA artists and activists. The group works at the intersection of art and activism, combining creative and humanitarian methods to facilitate a safe space for the exchange of information, tools, and skills to create a better world. HFA connects artists in the Middle East and North Africa with advocacy groups, activists, and NGOs striving to further LGBTQIA and women's rights.
Outcasts
Outcasts aims to promote social justice and eradicate all forms of violence, oppression and discrimination against transgender and intersex people. The group was established to advocate for the rights of transgender people and sex workers in Tunisia. It demands concrete amendments to the law that enforces the criminalization of transgender people and sex workers, and delegitimises their right to work, health and editable official documents. Outcasts seeks to influence legal change that allows name and gender changes in official documents, and lobby for sex workers, transgender and intersex people's right to health, education, work in addition to mental and physical wellbeing and care.
Panorama Barah
Panorama Barah is a street theater group that advocates for the rights of women and children, as well as the preservation of popular heritage. The group addresses issues of sexual harassment, domestic violence, early marriage, and female genital mutilation; with specific focus on the sitution of women in Upper Egypt who face multiple problems. Our performances tackle problems in a simple way, and we organize art workshops and storytelling for girls. Since our activities happen at the street, and now that we should maintain social distancing because of COVID-19, we are focused on raising awarness among girls of the virus and the violence that is associated with its spread, as well as providing poor girls with medical and prevention supplies to protect themselves against the virus, in addition to suppling them with the care and products they need during their periods.
Takatoat- Intersectionalities
Takatoat is a feminist collective based in Jordan which aims to spread women’s rights knowledge and culture in the country, and build a strong feminist movement. The group also aims to change and challenge discriminatory laws, norms and practices, establish safe spaces for women and girls, empower them and ensure their protection from different forms of gender-based violence. Takatoat runs a feminist reading and discussion group aiming to exchange knowledge on several feminist issues. They also use social media and arts as a main tool to expand feminist knowledge and challenge gender-based violence.
Tawjeeh Center for Democracy
We are a group of girl volunteers at Tawjeeh Center for Democracy and Right Culture. We had a great role in coordinating and facilitating activities on the occasion of the International Child Rights Day, International Women's Day, International Day for People with Disabilities, among others. While supervising cooking and catering for festivals, we found our passion and made the choice to pursue our education in culinary studies. The spread of Covid-19 has greatly affected families in Bethlehem, mainly because of the city's dependence on tourism that has completely stopped, resulting in the loss of family income, especially since a large number of women work in hotels and souvenir shops. The project supports women who used to work in the tourism sector in Bethlehem and lost their job to do small projects to earn money after training them.
We Play Equal
We Play Equal is dedicated to ending domestic violence and sexual assault in Turkey by increasing awareness, inspiring collective action and fueling culture change. The group leverages the power of sports as a creative and innovative tool to create a new normal for social innovation and break gender stereotypes by its inherent values: diversity, inclusion and teamwork as guiding principles for gender justice. We Play Equal embraces a gender-synchronized approach to further feminist activism by working with girls and boys simultaneously, and through a supportive atmosphere for discussion and reflection advances the process of gender norms transformation.
Play in her shoes
Playinhershoes is an initiative to empower women and girls through sports. The group first began its activism on Instagram in an effort to to start reducing the gap between men and women in sports, and do this by covering news of women in sport and creating sports events to allow girls to play without judgment. The group also developed a socks line featuring messaging to keep girls motivated and tell the world that it is about time women take charge in sports, and it is about time to play in her shoes!