During August 8-22, the WFA team will be on a collective rest. Before coming back, we are summing up the past 3 months of the Women’s Fund Armenia’s activities.
From the end of May to August we have organized 4 more FemTalks on the following topics:
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Invisible women: how the design of everyday life imperceptibly limits us (in English),
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The problems and needs of women in the border communities of Tavush region,
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The history of abortion in the Armenian context.
Find the complete list of our FemTalks here.
During this period, we also managed to organize two Facebook live streams with guest speakers on the following topics:
- Hope-based Communication, during which we discussed the idea of hope-based communication, its strategies, and ways of implementation in the Armenian context with Hayk Abrahamyan as a guest speaker.
- Sexual education, in which we hosted Anush Poghosyan – the coordinator of the “Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” program at Women’s Resource Center. We discussed with Anush sexual education in Armenia, in the context of women’s rights.
Find the complete list of discussions with guest speakers here.
As part of the “Feminist Landscapes – Civil Society Dialogue with All Voices” program, carried out by the Women’s Fund Armenia with the support of the German filia fund and the German Federal Foreign Office, another webinar was organized on June 7 by our partners from Pink Armenia NGO and Non-Discrimination and Equality Coalition. The topic of the webinar was “The Role of Theater in Speaking Up About Discrimination: Feminist Art.” This was the second webinar of the series organized by our local partners.
You can find the complete list of webinars here.
On July 14 the WFA organized another webinar within the same program, this time an international one. The topic was “Women and Militarism: From Politics to Personal Stories.” We had invited 6 guest speakers who discussed the global trends of militarism from the perspective of feminist criticism, its consequence on the world and on our region in particular as well as the impact of the Nagorno Karabagh conflict on women.
The photo above is the graphic picture of the webinar; in it, you can read some of the main ideas expressed by the speakers during the webinar. You can watch the webinar with English subtitles here.
On June 20, 22, and 23, Women’s Fund Armenia launched the first of the series of trainings within the “Femstory: Feminist oral story archive” project. The training was aimed at giving knowledge to future interviewers on the feminist methodology of collecting oral stories. During the training, about 30 future interviewers from Yerevan and different regions of Armenia got acquainted with feminist research methodology, ethics, the method of feminist oral histories, as well as the procedures of the Femstory project.
We will soon start collecting women’s stories with the selected interviewers. And to get more detailed information about the program, we suggest listening to Sona Baldryan, the coordinator of the program, here.
On July 21, we hosted new groups of teenage girls who, with the support of the WFA, implement various projects in their communities. The meeting was also attended by teenagers from previous programs who came to share their experiences and advice with the newcomers. During the warm meeting, the girls told about the progress of their initiatives, presented the works that are already completed, and told about the obstacles they have faced up to this moment. We will tell you about their plans in our next newsletters.
In July, the Women’s Fund Armenia also organized two institutional capacity-building meetings in Gyumri for local partners. The aim of this initiative is to help women’s organizations develop strategies and policies for their activities based on feminist principles. During the two meetings, around 15 people gained knowledge about the feminist approach to NGO management, feminist values, and principles, gender-sensitive budgeting, its purpose, and principles.
In the end, we suggest you get acquainted with the book list prepared by the WFA team: in it, we have presented several books that we read or have read and recommend to everyone. The list is here.
