When a new nonprofit organization is born or at time even before it is born as a registered entity, one of the first and most persistent questions its founder/s face is: what is your area of work? What kind of projects are you running?
More often than not, the answer to this question is shaped by global funding trends, donor priorities, thematic calls, and other shifting benchmarks that determine what is considered “fundable.” Projects, vision, and mission are tweaked and tapered to somehow fit these priorities. For instance, at present there is substantial funding around “climate change” and “artificial intelligence,” and one grows tired of seeing women’s rights organisations stretching themselves to relate every women’s issue to climate change—as though patriarchy has ceased to exist as a material and structural force.
I wanted Feminist Alliance Trust to be more rooted in the lived realities of everyday women whom we come across in our immediate social and institutional contexts. They are women who are navigating cultural and religious patriarchy, structural inequalities, inadequate public infrastructure which does not help women to succeed but still they do only to be met with sexual and other forms of gender based violence as a punishment for succeeding. Women who are not victims but gendered bodies full of desires and ambitions resisting the structures and giving their best fights. All they need is a bit of support.
Women to be fully autonomous individuals and full citizens they need feminist knowledge, the capacity to think, read and see like a feminist, feminist consciousness. Once they have the knowledge and consciousness, they need feminist right tools and infrastructure to carry on their fights. They also need those with power to use their position and influence to do their bit. With these thoughts, I have come up with around found strands under which I personally and Feminist Alliance Trust as an organization could provide services and interventions.
| Feminist Knowledge Creation | Commissioned social research, feminist policy analysis, public and critical writing, opinions, editorials etc., reports and journals. |
| Capacity Building | Workshops and trainings on a range of themes including gender, power and patriarchy; gender and public space; gender and digital public sphere; sexual harassment at workplace, fundamental rights, UDHR, CEDAW, RTI, criminal and media laws for women such as rights of women prisoners, women undertrials, how to prepare evidence kit for survivors of abuse and so on, and feminist consciousness-raising, storytelling, and women’s life writing. |
| Law and Justice | For every women to succeed in their existential and aspirational goals, we need the justice system to be in tune with feminist jurisprudence. Accordingly, Feminist Alliance Trust intends to carry out legal aid and advocacy by taking up pro-bono cases where women is the litigant, by pursuing public interest litigations to ensure government policies and institutions meant to function for feminist causes are doing to diligently. |
| Feminist Infrastructure | This is a broad category but at the outset, during the last one year of the organizational activities, I have realized that there is a gap in housing for independent women. Particularly women who are trying to leave violent homes, be it paternal or matrimonial, need a safe, comfortable and dignified short residence which is not a government shelter for poor and destitute. Women leaving violence are not poor and destitute. They deserve better homes than naari niketans. |
In the next 2-3 years, the Trust should be able to run at least one project under each of these strands. Some of these activities have already been going on in my individual capacity regarding which I would prepare a separate report and publish. In addition, I am now trying to build a team – a board of Trustees which will take the major decisions related to the Trust.
The four strands of organizational activities planned for Feminist Alliance Trust reflect how it is positioning itself—not as a project designed to fit funding frameworks, but as a feminist collective responding to everyday structural realities. As we continue to grow, these areas remain central to how we understand our work, our responsibilities, and our accountability.
Signed
Dr Sanjukta Basu, Advocate, Founder and Settlor-Trustee
