Dissident Shapes
UAF A&P’s Co-Leads Highlight Our Learnings From 2023
2023 was the year of humanity in crisis. The year that defied all codes of morality, ethics, and ways of living together on this planet. The year countless children were killed, orphaned, disabled, and traumatised by war, while the world silently watched. The year people from underrepresented regions reminded us that conflict and war exists in their lands too — and that their struggles are being ignored and erased.
In this reality, ‘crisis’ has taken on a whole new meaning. It has become a constant state of existence. For us in philanthropy, it has raised difficult and existential questions. It has emphasised what we always knew — that some geographies (and therefore, people) are so radical that they are either erased or forgotten. Yet, they rise, resist, and persist.
In 2023, the Asia and Pacific regions faced their own silent crises — ones that did not make it to the headlines, and ones from previous years (such as in Afghanistan and Myanmar) that entered the longer arc of crisis. For women, trans, and non-binary people in these countries, life became very challenging, and UAF A&P reminded the world about their reality and the need for continued support.
When the state of the world appears bleak, we turn to our planet for hope, energy, and power. We draw inspiration from Dr. Yvonne Underhill-Sem’s words:
“... we can be audacious in our oceanic thinking.
This means that rather than be destabilised or rendered paralysed by the rain and winds
that come from many directions, that are variously deflected or intensified,
deep ocean currents can keep us on track.”
On the UAF A&P drua, we are both the steerers and navigators sharing responsibilities, depending on each of our individual and collective energy levels, the scale and urgency of what needs to be achieved at a particular time. In navigating the past year, we learnt about emerging currents and became familiar with the difference between surface currents and deep ocean currents. The same way different currents play a role in determining how the ocean distributes heat energy through the planet, which in turn regulates and stabilises climate patterns, we are closely studying the currents linked to the world within (that is, how we remain a learning organisation) and the world beyond (how the world outside of Pacific and Asia impacts our work and action).
While our Annual Learning Report 2023 offers a glimpse into everything we have done and learnt in 2023, in this note, we would like to share four mantras we have embraced in 2024. We offer these in the hope that they provide respite, and perhaps even a spot of laughter, to all those who are on their own leadership voyages.
#1: The act of doing is liberating.
Ya’ni, there is a lot of noise around us on any given day. The anti-gender and anti-rights movements are upon us in full throttle. Governments being ruled by Far Right political parties have and will continue to severely limit the resources we have available to redistribute to activists in our regions. And our immediate philanthropic communities will continue to push us to (re)claim our space as feminist crisis responders.
It is within this context that we believe we are a community of doers. Every grant that reaches an activist in need gives us hope and purpose. In 2023, we proactively created new offerings for communities of defenders we had not supported before. In collaboration with our amazing and connected advisors, we reached out to them and asked for their feedback on what they needed and the barriers preventing them from accessing our grants. We listened to them and acted on their guidance. For example, we co-developed a grants call with our advisors from the sex workers community across Asia and the Pacific, and invited sex workers’ rights activists to apply for our rapid-response grants. Our advisors and team members accompanied them through the application process and we were able to support their unique needs.
We, thus, call on our feminist accomplices and allies within philanthropy and bilateral funders to increase investments to trusted infrastructures that directly transfer money to movements that are holding the line between survival and extinction. We also encourage funders and allies to influence programmes and individuals within their organisations to hear directly from us and the movements we support, understand the needs of activists on the frontlines of human rights defence, and offer flexible, trust-based funding.
#2: Care is at the centre of building feminist organisational culture.
Both our regions — Pacific and Asia — are tumultuous and volatile. Therefore, the crises that impact our grantees also impact our team. In 2023 alone, two of our team members faced threats to their own lives and safety. This was an extremely troubling situation for all of us. The support extended by every person in our team made sure that the affected staff felt safe and knew that we would do everything in our power to keep them safe. We realise that this will recur as crises extend and expand, perhaps with greater frequency. But we now know that we are prepared and fearless to face these challenges. Yes, we are scared that our actions may not be enough to counter every hostile reaction that obstructs our way, but the choice of inaction is catastrophic.
We call on our funding partners to recognise that the cost of doing business in a crisis is financial and emotional — and equally an opportunity for transformation. We need more funders to resource our feminist crisis resourcefulness and response. Fund us, fund grassroot feminist movements, fund the future.
#3: Grantmaking is a whole lot of common sense. And some innovation.
Simplicity is at the heart of grantmaking. In 2023, we did a set of things that increased our ‘absorptive’ capacity. For example, we did more outreach and involved different program team members, which strengthened our understanding of the diverse contexts in our regions. We accompanied potential grantees in person and helped them submit their grant applications. This, in turn, increased demand for our support, which outside of a heightened crisis, is an indicator of the effectiveness of our feminist resourcefulness and crisis response — and makes a strong case for increased investment to match our absorptive capacity.
We have been innovative in our ways of creating wealth in service of our movements. We have embraced the tensions between creating wealth (that relies on capitalist structures) and feminist values (that wholly defies capitalism) and found middle ground. As a feminist fund, we have risen to our purpose — redistribution of funds in our regions — and are on a path to financial reparations, and one day, sustainability. As feminist funders, we invest in a liberated and regenerative world, unimaginable for many but always a possibility for movements. We trust the work of our movements so we invest in their and our future. This work requires innovative thinking and risk-taking similar to how capital markets use future contracts to hedge and secure prices that work for their business models as well as speculate where prices will go next. The difference between our work and theirs is that ‘care’ for people and the planet is at the centre of how we reframe risk and relationships.
We call on funders to take risks — now is not the time to shy away. Hold risk with care and centre the authority of the defenders we work with. In doing so, we repurpose the tools of flexibility, solidarity, co-responsibility, trust, and love to forge new forms of risk and relationship.
#4: We can overcome (almost) everything with fashion, food, books, and humour.
Ok, not everything. Obviously. But they can certainly help us overcome a bad day or distract us when the world seems to have turned against us. As Co-Leads of UAF A&P, we take great pride in not taking ourselves too seriously and poking fun at each other all the time. One of us is a great fashion-forwarder and the other is an eager muse. Jokes apart, we derive tremendous strength from our regional power and politics expressed through our fabrics, prints, and silhouettes. They help us claim spaces (which are usually situated in cold places with grey/black palettes) and make our point.
We leave you with these top finds on what kept us inspired as we traversed through crisis after crisis with care:
- No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies (aka The Properties of Perpetual Light) by Julian Aguon
- What Storm, What Thunder by Myria Chancy
- Rooted by Mia Kami (song)
- History by Mia Kami (song)
- Me’a Kai: The Food and Flavours of the South Pacific by Robert Oliver
- Rangoon Sisters (website)
- Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat
- How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa
- The Incarcerations by Alpa Shah
- Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshanathan
- Stories We Come With edited by Shazia Usman
In solidarity and co-responsibility,
Vinita Sahasranaman and Virisila Buadromo
Co-Leads, UAF A&P
Read our Annual Learning Report 2023: A Thousand Shapes, A Thousand Forms.
