RWFund Newsletter 03

In front of you is the third and last newsletter for this year, stay tuned, join, donate!!!

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United Activists and Workers!

Within five programmes of support, Reconstruction Women's Fund awarded 72 grants in 2014, in the total amount of 15.541.271 dinars. Twenty-eight out of altogether fifty-eight groups and individuals we supported for the first time.
Towards 8^th of March, we are presenting you some of the groups we support that, as united activists and workers, deal with women’s labour rights in different ways.

Women’s Section of the Citizens` Association Equality (Ravnopravnost) from Zrenjanin organized this year the Support Group for Women who, as workers and trade union activists, experienced various forms of injustice in the field of labour. Suffering inhumane working conditions, deprived of health insurance and vacations, with minimal wages, often working twelve hours a day, continually threatened by dismissals and sexually harassed, most of them, out of fear for themselves and their families, prefer not to speak out publicly about the problems they are facing. Therefore, Support Group aims to empower the women through exchange of experiences, introduce them to their labour rights, enable them to make connections with each other and with activists dealing with women’s and labour rights.

Illegal Cinema (TkH) is fully non-commercial initiative aiming to create critical community of people who discuss socially significant issues through movies, instead of passively consuming and treating movies solely as entertainment. Within the programme Working Women, they screen the movies dealing with the issues of labour and gender, believing it is very important to think about these issues together since, as a member of the initiative put it, „wild capitalism“ in Serbia is being realized through the synergy of patriarchate and exploitation of the working class.

Artistic-activist group ACT Women from Belgrade has organized, for seven years already, Women’s Day, free of charge programme held every last Saturday of every month, with the purpose of improving quality of life of women through work on themselves, in a safe space where they are offered contents most women can hardly afford, due to lack of money and/or time. Until today, they organized workshops of yoga, self-defence, tai-chi, juggling, concentration, coordination and relaxation, sign language and psychodrama, macramé, decoupage, clothes mending etc.

How Floods Became Part of the Special Focus!

Floods floated to the surface the problems of the political life in Serbia, particularly censorship. RWF focused the experiences in the field, also trying to look into the future. This statement determined our course of action: Those who lost everything have already had nothing. Therefore we decided to cooperate only with the groups and individuals whose ability to create and think critically goes beyond projects. Intervention in the field is our power. And when it all started, we entered a broad invisible world: the world of displaced, evicted, repeatedly flooded or burned down, elderly deprived of their rights, asthmatic kids, cancers, heart attacks, widowed ones, big families. Settlements are in horrible conditions, on the edges of towns, very poor. One can see a long history of exclusion and negligence, and the solution is either to remain invisible or to expose themselves to threats. They struggle on their own. For them our interventions are unexpected, for us they are unusual: buying a cradle, looking for a chimney sweep, building roof over a ramshackle house, lobbying for a water channel to be cleaned, for finding accommodation and against obstructing repair works. This is just the beginning. In order to understand our decisions, read two texts not written by us – people see when they want to.

Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights > > >

Concluding Observations on the Second Periodic Report of Serbia > > >

RWF`s Executive Board members say:

We founded RWF 10 years ago for the sake of women with no intermediaries.
After ten years the fundamental policy remained as following: women are granted financial support because they have ideas (not because of the high positions within the hierarchies of power), because we believe in their ideas.
That’s what makes this fund special and, it seems, very beloved among small women’s non-governmental organizations in Serbia, and that’s good.
The fund also supports women making academic careers, since we are aware that it is a complicated thing to do in the political and financial situation in Serbia.
For example, until today (for the last ten years) the fund has supported graduate, master and doctoral studies at the University of Novi Sad with the total of 2.132.499 dinars. It is much more than the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia has invested for the same purpose in the same period.
RWF should remain a fund for women.

Svenka Savić

RWF is a place of feminist encounters and support. RWF programmes support and spread feminist knowledge and activism, enable for feminists of yesterday and of nowadays to meet each other and prepare the ones yet to come. Through great dedication of RWF and all circles it supported and opened, it became not only a feminist space, but a place where feminist diversity of Serbia (all things feminist) lives in and develops from. I am honoured to be a member of the Executive Board, one of the rare ones I’ve been invited to and one of the even rarer ones I would accept to be in.

Snježana Milivojević

RWF enables feminist peace groups and networks which activism is based on the field work to go on with their activities. It encourages creation of peace groups, which is very important, since most of the foundations do not support peace oriented groups. It cherishes feminist policy of creating knowledge, theory and experience. RWF is the main supporter of independent and autonomous groups in Serbia.

Staša Zajović

Scholars of Žarana Papić Stipends say:

For me, RWF are three very special women – wonderful in all their differences and fully dedicated to continual support to women, girls and feminist ideas. Still, it seems to me that RWF`s feminism keeps avoiding the traps of identity politics and remains open and permeable.

Jovana Timotijević

My doctoral studies in Novi Sad would be impossible if it weren’t for the RWF. I know that RWF supports women from Serbia, but the decision to support me, coming from Montenegro, shows that solidarity knows no boundaries. I am grateful to the friends from RWF who invest considerable efforts to survive under the circumstances and keep following principles of feminist ideology, which present the much needed alternative to the situation as it is. Nowadays, that’s mission impossible they keep making possible.

Ervina Dabižinović

The Expanding Circle – Give a Little, Change a Lot!

Reconstruction Women's Fund goes on with the campaigns and promotion of local philanthropy. We encourage our friends to consider investing into the future of women, women’s groups and the only women’s foundation in Serbia.
From 2013 to 2014 we had a chance to see which methods are the best and make people feel most pleasant and somehow safe when investing their money in some action or activity. We opened our ears for learning, windows for questions, and doors for discussions.
Our experience with the circle of giving or the circle of friends is a method that individually motivates first people from our closest environment and then expands, motivating the expanding circle of people to invest into something familiar, where they can see their money bringing changes. We are grateful to our friends who invest in the work of RWF, thus contributing to raising money for the activities of women`s groups. We hope the circle will keep expanding and our friends will start organizing events themselves, without us, and inform people of the importance of investments into women, women`s human rights and women`s movement in Serbia.

In 2014 we initiated the action SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST.

Goal of this action is to present women who have contributed and still contribute to pushing borders in our society. In the worst times, women show their strength and solidarity. Unfortunately, these important social actors are often being erased.
During the floods that struck Serbia, RWF was in the field, mapping needs, distributing help, communicating with people. It is important that we were not alone – this disaster brought out a high level of awareness that we couldn’t do without each other!
Therefore, the action SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST 3 we intended directly to helping a woman who had a very hard life, survived violence and in the eve of the winter had no roof over her head. RWF invested into the roof, and money we raised bought her the door. Thanks to the joined action of our friends and their direct donations, life became a little easier for Milica Djordjevic from Mladenovac.
It does not take a lot of money to donate, since it ain`t easy for anyone today, but a little changes a lot!
Here are the links for the action, and we will go on in the next year, keep up with our work and invest into changes!

SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST 1 - watch a short movie made by BeFem associates Sanja Seliskar and Nada Kostic > > >

SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST 2 - watch a short movie made by Nada Pleskonjić > > >

SISTERS ARE DOING IT BEST 3 - watch a short movie made by Nada Pleskonjić > > >

All the information on actions and pictures can be seen at our FB p age

Solidarity is Our Power!

Join in the circuit of positive energy, donate for our programmes!!!

Reconstruction Women's Fund goes on with the campaigns and promoting local philantropy. We motivate our friends to think about investing in the future of women, women's groups and in the only women's foundation in Serbia. We keep raising money because Women are everywhere you go and women know where to go!

Instructions for payment to our bank account:
Account name: Reconstruction Women’s Fund
Address: Stevana Sremca 3/19, Belgrade
Account number: 205-0000000185125-38
*** Purpose: donation
Tax identification number: 103330891
Identification number: 17544420
All banks require you to determine the amount you want to donate and the day of the month when you want the amount to be taken off your account.

Instructions for fiscal sponsorship:
If you live in USA and want to donate to Reconstruction Women’s Fund, you can easily do it through fiscal partnership of RWF and Global Fund for Women. Your donation is tax deductible. To donate, follow the link: > > >

From September 19, after 10 years of RWF work, you may find a reconstructed RWF website at RWFund.org - read, watch and apply! For even more contents and faster exchange, visit our profiles at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!

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