Challenge. Life. Risk. Fear. Insecurity. The lives of women and their communities. Isolation. Collapse. Lockdown. Words and feelings that haunted women all over Brazil in early March 2020, when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported. At the beginning of that year, the main project we had planned was to hold a feminist camp in the northern region of the country. However, in the face of that scenario, we had to step back.
But since in every crisis situation it is usually the women who quickly take action for their communities in order to plan strategies and build creative alternatives, we joined other women to deal with the pandemic, which at that moment frightened the whole world.
It wasn't easy. It took us more than a year to define new paths for that project, but it happened, facing all the challenges of our own reality and the reality of feminists in Brazil, such as work overload, mourning for the loss of loved ones, the rise of conservative ideas and online violence against activists, the shortage of work, and the governmental negligence in all spheres.
We decided, after careful listening, to create a digital care process that would meet these new demands and needs.
We then created in 2021 the Gincana Monstra, a synchronous and asynchronous online process, based on the idea of infrastructure of affection and the creation of a solidarity network among us, in eight weeks of exchange and learning about digital and ancestral technologies, strategies and security, territoriality, transcentrality and intergenerational knowledge, always based on our own experiences, cosmoperceptions and feelings.
The Gincana Monstra is an all-online process, with eight weeks of activities, to promote learning processes in digital care aimed at feminist activists. The intention is for them to go on to being multipliers of this knowledge in their collectives and communities. APC supported the Gincana Monstra by hosting global convenings for the Transfeminist Network (TFN) to exchange ideas with the global Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX) network of trainers. These convenings enabled a deeper exploration of feminist digital safety methodologies and infrastructures of care, and a stronger network of support for and by femininst facilitators and trainers of digital safety.
What you will read below is a summary report about the gymkhana, which was facilitated, conceived and carried out by the Transfeminist Digital Care Network, with the support and partnership of APC. In this document, you will learn a little about us and the gymkhana's journey.
In July 2022, TFN and APC will collaborate in offering training in this methodology to a global audience of trusted feminist allies of the FTX network. Activities with the global facilitators will be online and for people in the trusted network of APC/FTX and the Transfeminist Network. The scripts/curriculum developed for the FTX site will be public and aimed at people who are facilitators in feminist learning processes. The FTX: Safety Reboot curriculum, which APC hosts and curates, will grow from the addition of the Gincana Monstra methodologies.
May we inspire and nurture each other.
Yours affectionately,
Rede Transfemista de Cuidados Digitais / Transfeminist Network of Digital Care
Summary report about the gymkhana carried out by the Transfeminist Digital Care Network, with the support of APC.
Este post também pode ser lido em português.