# data[].attributes.body
Payments & money transfers during travel

Difficulty with transferring money - our banking system - have to prove there are two people who approve payments - can't use transferring platforms because they don't have 2 person approval

Prepay in lumpsum

Finance thing is always going to be a challenge because of approval of payments needs two people. Diff if private company.

What will it take to make sure grants facilitators are financially supported/transfers are easy during their travels?

Someone from finance always needs to be at large convenings

Upskill team on finance templates that we can use to be more efficient - share responsivility and have common team practices

Finance sandpit yay - budget, reimbursement, receipts

# data[].attributes.body
Ava's tattoo design

# data[].attributes.headline
What is political for you, how do you decide?

# data[].attributes.subject
What is political for you, how do you decide?

# data[].attributes.body
Care is political & our means of reaching our goal of systemic change

Responsibility for change belongs to the collective & we are all accountable and responsible for change

Rights impact everyone & are not individual - we need to make it conscious to everyone. Everything that has wider systemic impact get/ has to get political.

For issues that is political for us we need - human rights, autonomy, co-existence

Everything is political - even being apolitical is being "political", taking a stand

What is political is about a stance/perspective - what stand do we take on various issues? What politics do we stand by?

Choices are political (indian context food is political) - what choices does the org make?

What does the politics of feminist grant-making look like? Do we all have the same understanding? Or do we need to have same understanding?

Do we hold differences while also building and using a common understanding?

Eg - what is our stance on various issues - sex workers rights, inclusion of transmen, etc

ADDITION (Session 2)

Our team is expanding and diverse. Are we clear on our politics, are we clear on why we do what we do and what drive our decisions? We need a space to clarify our concepts, values and principles that guides our everyday decision and practices. We also need a space to share our strengths we bring into the team, especially for sensitive issues. Fro example: sex work vs anti trafficking and understanding that discourse, gender identities and sexual orientation - these are often said interchangeably and we assume, not everyone understand this correctly.

Soul of grant making is in the participatory process. Self determination, care, community led change is important. given our RRG, our current model works. If we expand our mandate, can we review other participatory grant making models? How do we stretch this practice?

Discuss risk - we are living riskier lives. Have been practicing dignity of risk - PNG and west papua for example. This is an imp conversation. Think of this at the personal level and how this impacts our future.

With fast changing political context, growing risks for activists including our team, how do we embrace the dignity of risk in our everyday practices?

=== end session 2 ===

# data[].attributes.headline
Co leadership, co-responsibility and solidarity

# data[].attributes.subject
Co leadership, co-responsibility and solidarity

# data[].attributes.body
These values are manifesting and practiced in various ways - through shared decision making, conceptualising in grant making , through convening and co-facilitating an event [ the oasis of reflection] or mobilising resources.

# data[].attributes.body
systemic is the end goal.
systemic change is also advocating on behalf of the marginalised communities in lets say philanthropy spaces.
Struck by bold moves (e.g., a fund wrapping up by giving away all their assets in the next 5 years) - as a recognition that philanthropy orgs are also part of a problem.
in a perfect world, we wouldn't need philanthropy - wealth that comes to philanthropy, ultimately comes from uunjust practices.
all issues activists face will exacerbate - with all climate crises. thats the biggest problem we have. how is UAF supporting that work - climate crisis - thats the larger crisis that surrounds all other crises. How do we work through that solution?

we sit on a vantage point of addressing / playing the defence position to a wide array of social movements and players - all marching their march towards their own vision of systemic change. We have very attractive offer here to expand our own definitions of who we support.

starting from the "basics" of who is woman, trans, queer defender...
centering voice and agency - doing this intentionally is part of the systemic change

how would we translate this to practice?

money cannot solve every problem. but money can advance the basic resources for defenders - to raise the bar of their standard of living and their infrastructure. how little they have and how much they have to do? we need to get resources to that far remote areas holding the ground.
building the bridge for their voice to carry forward - those in decision making can hear the voice of the people on the ground. is there a way to institutionalise advocacy funding?

centering small womens groups. are giving up with no resources. we need to continue supporting them.

CCG and wantok -underlined that social protection dont exist for activists. no medical insurance; poverty. these grants gave them moments of respite. DIVA gift - used for medical care, gifts to their community - shared it! how do we continue to provide resources for social protection? we cannot rely on State. so how do we create that mechanism?

# data[].attributes.body
Are we just a funder? Are we bringing " too much" to the system??

# data[].attributes.headline
4. What other everyday questions are there? B/W grants team, comms and grants, comms and co-leads

# data[].attributes.subject
4. What other everyday questions are there? B/W grants team, comms and grants, comms and co-leads

# data[].attributes.body
Grants
1. For a grants application process is to have 2-3 people as references. But if we have met them, know them as UAF A&P team, can we reduce their number of references? This may help make the process faster. This may also help strengthen the trust bw us and team.

2. We get a lot of requests to sign into different movements (to sign their calls, statements etc.) and our response is that we don't sign on because we don't do advocacy (unless it is philanthropic). Do we need to rethink this? We know the justifications (security, to stay under the radar), however these requests are more frequent now. How do we think about advoacy outside of philanthropy?

Secondly, is it time for us to support more advocacy work (outside of writing and signing statements?)

Sisterfunds
2. Many of us our engaged in sisterhood work, and care and wellbeing is the centre of our work. Curious to here what would it take (resources) for us to participate in sisterhood work?

Collective Care (Global Sisterhood/Regional)
- The "collective care" work is not just EDF's work. It fits into different programmes at A&P too. How can we have the conversation of collective care work from different spaces (comms, RM, RRG, MEAL) consolidated into one?

Comms
How does information and conversation flow between focal groups (for example the conversation on collective care).

Sisterfunds Comms
Biggest strength is to leverage all 4 groups in thought leadership. Currently it is only SM etc. How can we use our forces to think together and strategically work on thought leadership?
Given that all of 4 SFs are at very different stages of the comms strategy.

Knowledge Sharing and Transparency
We do not have a proper mechanism to enrich the other team member with experiences, knowledge, conversations that happened at different spaces. Sometimes it happens (like the report back from Indonesia) but not always, and how do we do that?
It is not just reporting back, but how do we strategically take out what we hear outside, who in the team can participate intellectually? How can we have strategic conversations that are not isolated to the people that have access to spaces?

On Collaboration (What is the dark side of collaboration?)
On co-leadership, for example, decision making and reporting back takes longer and is sometimes out of sync with each other. It is also often delayed, in terms of inputs.

# data[].attributes.body
Group2:

Identities are created often by funders, to ensure they have funding streams to put applications into, and/or hedging risks. But at a conference regarding temporary relocation of activists organised in Thailand, their criteria was to support low-medium risk activists which excluded those that had the most immediate need to be evacuated. So these identity based discrimination is problemmatic.

Its imp as a funder to advocate with donors to acknowledge name and recognise how people are being boxed. Their identities are often not self-chosen. Recognising everyone as humans with multiple identities - leaving the decision to them on which identity do they want to present themselves with.

We need to advocate for reframing the binary language, because in some roles people are in positions of power and in others they are powerless, we cant make it easy for people to be in boxes. For instance, Pacific indigenous communities do not recognise nation states - these concepts are debatable.

When we use framings like dependant territories and sovereign states, or we talk about pro-democracy movts, we need to recognise the risks inherent and decide what should be the framing. We need open minds to be able to acknowledge limitations and risks and communicate it too.

For instance in the Pacific there are territories that belong to France or America. But Pacific islanders refer to these territories by their indigenous name and by their identity of being Pacific islands than as territories of America or France. So there are debates around who will make grants - Will it be Asia and Pacific or America-based fund?

Group 1  -----

Currently the organisation has not been indicating grants by the self-determined states such as West Papua, Taiwan, Tibet, Kashmir, etc.

How should we decide - on one hand honouring pro-democracy movements and on the other hand being mindful of their risks?

Perhaps think of all the processes that involve this identification and what we can do about them, e.g. public communications, communications with grantee partners, record keeping and donor reports?

# data[].attributes.headline
How do we understand the different realities and support the needs of the region?

# data[].attributes.subject
How do we understand the different realities and support the needs of the region?

# data[].attributes.body
A request we heard in 2020, which we werent able to make good on - If we had money within countries, such as Myanmar and Afghanistan already parked and available, could we have supported them better? Same sentiment we heard in Chiang Mai- when there is intelligence of Crisis happening, is there a possibility of money already being in the country, available and accessible for activists/defenders?

The fact that we are hearing the same needs repeatedly we need to acknowledge that.. Does that mean we need to tweak who we are, does that mean we have to have sub-grantees holding our funds with them to support crises - like the Early Warning Systems.

It may be worthy to do an assessment - a study or risk assessment of what taking on board recommendations by activists mean. There is a push for regional support mechanisms and rapid response.

WHR did the country-wide model - sub-granted it to orgs within Ukraine, gave 20k to org, so all their employees get it..

We do that already, via fiscal sponsorship. But it is different from huge regrants to org within country for them to make grants on our behalf. So that’s differing from our mandate.. There are several costs involved. These things take time to form. We have done well - covid crisis grants, crisis response grants, Wantok.. We have adapted when need was dire. Also with Afghanistan we broadened our criteria big time. We are adapting and we have done best. Team request, and we have a board to be accountable too.

This year, reduced number of grants in comparison to last two years of crisis. We have adapted quite well, where we can we are doing grants differently. We are broadening our mandate - like the new grant we have done to India - 8 activists and their orgs - they are a theatre group - we are shifting the narrative in that way in which we respond. Going to Nepal and seeing the huge need among all the regions and its diverse and similar too.. what do you do? We have our mandate and we have responded well.

Do we stick to our mandate or do we listen to what our grantees and advisors are saying and wanting us to do?

How should the team honour the voices of the grantees? eg.  identifying Taiwan as a sovereign nation, or be more mindful of  risking backlash?

What have we already learned from our past experience with respect to red tagging and backlash in supporting pro democracy movements?

CAN WE WORK ON REGIONAL MODELS TO MOVE ACTIVISTS TO NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES WHERE THEIR WORK, EXPERIENCES AND VOICES CAN STAY RELEVANT? OR SUPPORTING MOVING THEM TO EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IS RINGING THE DEATH KNELL FOR ACTIVISM?
Is our purpose saving them during crisis, if they lose their activism due to hardships of lives - we were at least able to give them the breathing space. When we offer activists living expenses for 6 months - it’s like drowning, but give them some time to recoup before they are back in the water.

In terms of immediate response, we focus on safety, but how do we look at long-term supporting their activism and resilience.

Purpose of our work is to sustain feminist activism. We are creating an ecosystem, but our support is very limited, and only for a particular point in time. But that’s not all what the activists need. They need longer-term support. There are other ways outside of grant making by which we can support.

HOW ARE WE RESPONDING TO DIFFERENT NEEDS OF PWDs?

ssues relating to PWDs - how do we as a team deal with activists who are PWDs and are in crisis/conflict areas - are we equipped with the right tools to engage with PWDs, in PNG many activists live in remote areas, no secure internet access, how do we address this? It’s the q we are asking - who do we listen to. It also makes it imp how we need to apply different lenses, and we are trying to organise a workshop to better understand the different needs of PWDs, we need to be able to relate and engage with them in language that is accessible to them - we also need to change our application process, it is from recommendations from an audit we did in 2020. Support, different kinds of transportation - these might be things you don’t consider for activists with no disabilities.

# data[].attributes.body
- Fareen's meditation bowl from Nepal for healing
- Deepthy's poem for reciting and applause
- Viri's poem by Camari (oasis of reflection idea)
- Voting for an ABBA dance-off in Sri Lanka
- Conversations on identities
- Conversations on new streams of works - such as advocacy