Women’s Fund in Georgia

A local grant-making organization supporting women’s rights groups/organizations and individual activists for social changes with financial resources, capacity building and promoting the culture of feminist philanthropy.

Women’s Fund in Georgia has awarded over 1100 grants nationwide and organized over 200 local and international fundraising events.

Women’s Fund in Georgia is an activist fund that not only supports the women’s movement but is also a part of it. Women’s Fund in Georgia contributes to the movement-building by supporting WHRDs, whose work and commitment are not acknowledged and valued in Georgia.

We want women, girls, and transgender people to live in a safe, equal and free environment.

To realize this vision, the mission of the Women’s Fund in Georgia is to make girls and women more active and strengthen the women’s movement.

Care and Healing

Women’s Fund in Georgia sees healing and care as integral values and principles for feminist movement building.

Defending human rights is intensely rewarding work. It is also difficult and is often dangerous. These aspects of the work are hard to talk about. Rarely, if ever, do women human rights defenders have the time, or the safe spaces, to reflect on their security and well-being in a meaningful way. To respond to this need, Women’s fund in Georgia has been providing Integrated Security Workshops for feminist activists and WHRDs in Georgia since 2015. The purpose of the workshops is to create a safe space for activists, where they can reflect on their personal and public life and integrate self and collective care practices on different levels.

The ISW analysis showed, that even though it is a vital space for mobilizing, it is not enough in terms of integrating healing and well-being principles in a wider movement context. Thus, in 2020 Women’s Fund in Georgia, together with partners and Georgian healers started working on the healing concept, rooting it in the local, ancestral experience and wisdom.

Feminist Residence Construction 

Women’s Fund in Georgia has developed a manual on healing and local practices. The process of the manual development included the preparation works, defining specific objectives and selecting experts to be involved.

Three groups were identified to be involved in the development process:

–        A group of local practitioners who work using different methodologies and mediums

–        A group of feminist activists who have contributed with their experiences on care, trauma, healing and related issues;

–        A group of experts, which included feminists from different parts of the world. These women have provided 3 webinars for the group of practitioners and activists.

 

The topics and hosts of the webinars:

  1. Cara Page – Healing Justice, the herstory of the concept;
  2. Sandra Ljubinkovic and Bojana Glusac – deepening practices for feminist activists, centring ourselves and dealing with traumatic experiences;
  3. Cynthia El Khoury – Trauma-informed modalities, personal experiences;

 

The knowledge from the webinars was later on translated into the manual. The purpose of the manual is to create a safe space for feminist activists to discuss care, healing, burn-out, generational] trauma, existing systems that we operate in, possible alternatives, local practices, witchcraft and instruments to deal with all the above-mentioned.

The manual writing process was closely supported by Cynthia El Khoury, who provided feedback and comments on how the document could be operational. The extensive 5-day meeting took place in December 2021 (details are elaborated in the report). Georgian healers, practitioners, feminist activists and witches gathered to further the manual topics into practice and to create a community, which will evolve collectively and will learn from each other.

 

As a follow-up to the process, the given module was developed, which is an attempt to document the existing feminist practices, discuss the needs and strategies, and politicize healing and care. follow-up.

Our Home Garden

Women’s Fund in Georgia started construction of the Safe House for Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) in Kakheti region of Georgia in 2016 with the support of OAK Foundation and Mama Cash. Women’s Fund in Georgia has created all necessary legal documentation for building the house and created a detailed house plan and detailed budget for the construction costs. At this point, the base of the building and a wooden skeleton are built, the straw bale walls are completed, windows and doors are installed, and the walls are plastered from the outside with clay. The floor of the building is laid, and sewage and electric works are completed.

The area represents a unique place for the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions. The construction is based on the Permaculture principle (which is a regenerative and self-maintained agricultural system modelled from natural ecosystems) using wood, straw bales and clay. This is a three-story building with a conference room, cafe and bedrooms.

The purpose of the centre is to serve feminist activists, green activists, WHRDs, Women’s CSOs and local women free of charge to organize meetings, conferences, workshops, presentations, planning of the work process and related work. One of the purposes of the centre is to support cross-movement cooperation. The space will also be used as a residence for artivists and women writers to provide private space for them and their work. They will have an opportunity to leave there in exchange for taking care of the space and its garden.

The centre will create a friendly, open and safe space, existing beyond formal space, which will be attractive to Georgian and foreign activists.

A community garden will be established, where activists and all the interested parties will have an opportunity to engage in gardening. Working on the soil and gaining collective benefit will establish additional connections between the ones who work and live there.

The centre will be equipped with a library and free internet/computers, for activists to work and to generate knowledge. The centre will also have a small movie theatre (closed and open, on the porch), where film screenings will be arranged for both visiting guests and local women. A cafe will operate at the base of the centre, as well as an eco and secondary materials “concept store” online.

To ensure the free services and the financial sustainability of the space, it will additionally be used for commercial purposes – a conference room and bedrooms will be rented for less than market price for other non-governmental organizations, while it will be charged following the market price for the business/government organizations, and tourists, who will use the hostel, cafe, conference hall of the building. The location of the building (Alazani river bank, wine road, the road to Mtatsusheti, views of the pebbles and the Caucasus mountain) and its green/ecological concept (straw-bale building, community garden, etc.) provides a good opportunity for the general audience to get interested in it.