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Roma Girls` Solidarity
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Roma Girls` Solidarity is a part of the Special Focus support program – it’s an educational program organized by RWF for the last three years in southern Serbia, attended by more than forty Roma girls, aged 14 - 21, from Niš, Jelašnica, Pirot, Vlasotince, Vranje, Bujanovac, Aleksinac, Vladičin Han, Predejan, Grejač. It's intention is to create an open space for active learning, gaining knowledge and skills, using art to express personal experiences, energies, feelings and memories, needs and oppinions, as well as questions addressing the immediate surrounding, but also broader public. Through this program, girls are being empowered to step out in public, to raise their usually suppressed voices (supressed because they are Roma, they are young, they are women, they are poor) and speak out about topics they probably never spoke of before, to make friends, to connect with each other and support each other, as well as to meet various artists and activists. > > >
In 2012, in cooperation with Patricia Ariza, a Columbian theatre director and political activist, the collective performance Pasarela was created, based on individual stories and memories of the girls and expressing the „defense of diversity of bodies, sizes, ages, traditions, choices, voices, visions and ways of thinking of the women“. Actors were program participants and members of artistic-activist group ACT Women from Belgrade. Through stories about violence against women, war rapes, child marriages, the cult of preserving innocence, lesbianship, femicide, life and struggle on the margins, this performance promotes empowering, empathy, breaking the isolation, protest and demand to... „Continue my education“, „Choose the person I love“, „Change the decisions I previously made“, „Be fat“... The performance countinued to live through the movie bearing the same name, which trailer can be seen at > > >
In July this year, working for a week with Ana Woolf, an artist from Argentina, Vera Ribeiro, an artist from Brasil, and their old friends from ACT Women, the girls exchanged various experiences and took part in the process of rethinking our attitudes toward our bodies and voices and learned how to treat them responsibly. The joint work resulted in the performance „Presence in Life“, played in the Puppet Theatre in Niš and in Roma settlements in Vlasotince and Pirot.
As Ana Woolf put it, „Every day we will find a new door to struggle with, to pass through. New places to pass through, to dance in, to stay in, to step into“. Solidarity (as well as enthusiasm and decisiveness) of Roma girls will keep that door wide open. > > >
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Books and Articles
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Education on Critical Issues is part of the Special Focus program and publishing is one of dynamic parts of the area. What the books have to do with a Fund: this is Socrates philanthropy, for all to learn, like Creative Commons. Virtual editions are our contribution to the future of an off-line Library. Printed books we sent to the libraries all over Serbia, 52 libraries which in the parcel we invite for activism of women’s human rights by adding 8th of March Map of activities and the leaflets of 16 Days of activism against Violence against Women, all in cooperation with women’s groups. The books we publish in large circulations for the feminist theory to stand in front and in the middle of mainstream, wise and loud. Now READ! On RWF’s website one could find over 30 selected books and articles in Serbo-Croatian language. For the first time we list them all to make the politics of the choice clear as well as the richness of the voice: Serial “Disobedient to History”: Virginia Woolf – Between the Acts; Virginia Woolf – Orlando; Rosa Luxemburg – Letters from Prison; Carolina Maria de Jesus – Quatro de Despejo; Jasmina Tešanović – Matrimony; bell hooks – Feminist Theory: from Margin to Center; Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Diary; Jasmina Tešanović – Comrade girls, Homophobic political violence, Srebrenica; Audre Lorde – Sister Outsider; Virginia Woolf – Three Guineas; Christine de Pizan – The Book of the City of Ladies. Serial “Anti-War Centenary of the First World War”: Dragan Stojković – Anti-war and pacifist ideas in the history of Serbia and Anti-war Movements until Year 2000; Rosa Luxemburg – The Crisis of Socialdemocracy (Junius – pamphlet); Nikola M. Popović - Dimitrije Tucović, His Life and Work; Dimitrije Tucović – Selected Articles on Militarism and Nationalism; Jasmina Tešanović - Lili from Belgrade; Dimitrije Tucović – Serbia and Albania. Books printed by Reconstruction Women’s Fund: Jud Nirenberg – Gipsy Sexuality – Romani and Outsider Perspectives on Intimacy; This is My Report to You, Žarana Papić quotes; Tanja Ignjatović – Violence Against Women in Intimate Partners Relationship: Model of Coordinated Community Response; Adriana Zaharijević – Becoming Woman; Written Out – How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women’s Organizing, report by Cynthia Rothschild. Guested Books: Guide to Strike, by Dejana Ivančić Spasojević, Liza De Mone, Jovanka Zlatković; Building Academic Community, bibliography of Svenka Savić: 1963-2011, ed. Nataša Belić. Announcement: For 10th anniversary of assassination of two guardsmen Dražen Milovanović and Dragan Jakovljević on October 5th in Topčider we shall print in collaboration with Women in Black the book by Bojan Tončić Anatomy of the Topčider Crime.
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Other Groups about Us
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Cooperation between Reconstruction Women’s Fund and Autonomous Women’s Center is the result of a real need for allying organizations which share the goal of empowering women. The cooperation is continual and deep and includes collecting information from women, analyzing the situation of women in Serbia based on the collected data, discussing the policies for advancement of the position of women, rethinking future actions and spreading the messages reached through the discussions and campaigns aiming to change the public awareness. Reconstruction Women’s Fund is responsible, deeply dedicated and motivated partner organization, watching for the need of women and always offering more than agreed upon.
Bobana Macanović,
Autonomous Women’s Center, Belgrade > > >
Reconstruction Women’s Fund knows how to recognize an emerging organization and often is it’s first and most important supporter. It recognizes the role of unprivileged groups of women within the women’s movement and is able to be the organization one can count on in difficult times.
Reconstruction Women’s Fund has supported the work of organization ...OUT OF CIRCLE – VOJVODINA from the very beginning, when all we had were ideas and enthusiasm. Continual support enabled us to speak about the topics raised within the movement of persons with disabilites, which women’s movement wasn’t sufficiently familiar with: double discrimination, violence, body, sexuality of women with disabilities...
Today, we, ...OUT OF CIRCLE – VOJVODINA, see the RWF’s support as very important, since it enabled the growth and development of the only organization of women with disabilities in Vojvodina, and consider RWF our permanent partner and friend we can lean on.
Svjetlana Timotić,
...OUT OF CIRCLE – VOJVODINA, organization for the support of women with disabilities > > >
Feminist vision, uncompromised political struggle against nationalism, conservativism and militarism, struggle for the rights of women and sensitivity to the rights of marginalized women have marked the work of RWF in the previous decade, and without that work our feminist movement would not be so strong as it is today.
RWF contributes to work and survival of women’s groups in various ways and what I have to underline is the support to grassroots organizations, to young women through Mirror program, women who want to continue education in different programs of Gender Studies through Žarana Papić Stipends, as well as the support to numerous publishing activities of various groups, including Women’s Studies Center. One of the latest RWF initiatives makes me especially happy, the feminist philanthropy initiative aiming to animate activists to invest money in the movement and feminist organizations and thus not only help the movement survival, but also develop the sense of responsibility and care for its future.
From the day it was founded, Reconstruction Women’s Fund has been “an ally” of Women’s Studies Center, since it has been represented by the feminists aware that no change would be possible without knowledge and spreading of feminist knowledge. During the past decade, RWF helped Women’s Studies Center in the realization of curriculum, in publishing books and magazines, preservation and renewal of the Center’s most valuable treasure – the library open for all, as well as in forming the legacy of Žarana Papić, one of the Centre’s founders. Thanks to the RWF support, that was never solely financial, the Center keeps spreading feminist knowledge, solidarity and politics.
Katarina Lončarević,
Women’s Studies Center, Belgrade > > >
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Sisters Are Doing It Best!
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In 2014 we initiated the action SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST.
Goal of the action is to represent women whose work has contributed to changes and pushed borders in our society. In the most critical times, women show their strength and solidarity. Unfortunately, despite the importance of their actions, they are often being erased.
During the floods that struck Serbia, RWF was in the field, mapping needs, distributing help, communicating with people. What’s important is that we were not alone, that this disaster brought up a high level of awareness that we can’t do without each other!
The first action Sisters Are Doing It Best we did in partnership with BeFem, a feminist cultural centre, and during the evening dedicated to solidarity and friendship in a great and friendly atmosphere of October Community Centre (Zadruga Oktobar), with wonderful panelists – Čarna Radoičić, Marija Ratković, Nada Đuričković – and wonderful DJs – Women's Studies Center, ACT Women, Women In Black, Autonomous Women's Center (Centar za ženske studije, ACT Women, Žene U Crnom , Autonomni ženski centar) – we raised 24.111,oo dinars for Veliki Crljeni!!! We bought goods for forty women, thirty children and twenty-six men from Veliki Crljeni. At this link you can see a short movie made by BeFem collaborators Sanja Seliškar and Nada Kostić > > >
SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST 2 raised the question of housing, a roof above one’s head. The floods in Serbia left people in many places without their homes, houses where they could get back, and some people lost their documents due to fast evacuation, while some internally displaced persons did not have documents in the first place. Therefore, it was important to discuss this topic and the ways to help. In the atmosphere of hospitality in café Ljutić, with great panelists Jovana Vuković, Dušica Parezanović, Violeta Đikanović, Iva Čukić, and wonderful DJs Sisters Engineers we succeeded to raise 30.000,oo dinars for the Karađorđevo settlement in Smederevska Palanka!!! For people in Karađorđevo we bought a stove, food and household chemicals, and the goods were directly distributed by Violeta Đikanović from Women in Black who was all the time in contact with the families from this settlement. At this link you can see a short movie made by Nada Pleskonjić > > >
The right to housing is one of the fundamental human rights that requires full and unequivocal affirmation, especially today, in the time of general erosion of social rights that reduces this right to one of the needs that individuals are supposed to fulfill by themselves through market relations. Many people are falling victims of violations of this right, but the most dramatic cases in Serbia have happened in informal Roma settlements that do not meet the criteria of acceptable housing, and forced evictions of inhabitants of these settlements have often most severely violated this right. The floods that struck Serbia and Balkans in May this year exposed all the difficulties in reaching this right, especially for Roma who are treated differently than majority population (in providing temporary places to stay and by lack of appreciation of specific housing needs of Roma in regions that were not affected by floods, etc).
Jovana Vuković
Regional Centre for Minorities
All the information and photographs can be seen at our FB page
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JOYFULNESS CRAZINESS 5 & RWF 10th Anniversary!
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