Feminist #TechJoy! nurtures networks of safety and trust through small grants

By APCNews

Published on 28 March 2024
Page last updated on 8 April 2024

APC Women’s Rights Programme is delighted to announce the successful applicants for the first round of its small grants programme, Exploring Feminist #TechJoy! A diverse and global group of organisations and individuals from Uganda, Colombia, India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Morocco, Mexico, Chile, Indonesia and Ecuador will implement a variety of creative and engaging projects until May 2024.

In late 2023, through a closed call, individuals, collectives, networks and forward-thinking people, who are working towards a feminist internet but have limited access to funds, were invited to apply to our Feminist #TechJoy! small grants call. We had a wonderful response and struggled to narrow down the eight finalists. The maximum per proposal was USD 5,000, and joint proposals from two or more organisations or individuals was USD 15,000. In total we awarded USD 50,000. For the 2023 call, we had four thematic areas and applicants were free to interpret and localise as they saw fit:

• Feminist Principle of the Internet (FPI) on the environment: Local conversations on a feminist internet and the environment.

• Archiving: Archiving memory of feminist tech activism including through art, podcasts, visual media, etc.

• Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX): Support to augment existing projects that are engaging around digital safety and care, training workshops, building a wider cohort of in-country trainers, documentation of experiences, research and knowledge production.

• Documenting practices of feminist collective care/infrastructures of care: Time and space to reflect and share what care means in your contexts; develop briefs, writings and thought pieces that can be shared/used in trainings and/or used to motivate donors.

APC Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) has dedicated funds from our core grants as part of our long-term commitment to support the activities of partners and allies working towards a feminist internet and is a key part of our movement-building strategy in feminist tech. These small grants are aimed at supplementing ongoing work as well as more experimental work in the area of capacity-building and campaigns, including research and knowledge production related to the topics listed above. These small grants are available to accelerate the development of feminist infrastructure for online, and on-ground organising and strengthening of national and regional interventions around digital security, and safety and care for women and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Context in which feminist tech activists work

In a context of increased surveillance, gendered misinformation and disinformation, climate catastrophe and closing civil society spaces, particularly for gender-diverse and Black bodies, both online and on-ground, these small grants are intended to encourage exploration of alternative infrastructures and strategies to build capacity, nurture networks of safety and trust, bring communities together to learn and explore, and create alternative knowledge and archives in meaningful and relevant ways.

Frequently the same individuals and collectives doing this type of work from the global South are the ones who have limited access to funds or are not in the reckoning because they are undertaking exploratory work or are not established NGOs. In the absence of mainstream funder interest, and with increased support from our donor partners, APC WRP has identified that even small injections of funds are useful to begin exploring or provide needed supplementation of ongoing work.

Meet the grantees!

1. AmigasHacker.club – Transfeminist karaoke against gender violence (Mexico and Chile)

2. Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach Uganda (BOSCO-U) Limited – Cyber resilience for rural women in Northern Uganda (Uganda)

3. Cristina Barretto de Menezes Lopes – Birosca, a transfeminist collective: Gender and technology in Brazil: 2006 to 2012 (Brazil)

4. Nawara Women's Network for the Middle East and North Africa – Collecting information about online and in-person GBV across the MENA region

5. Patience Muwanguzi – Empowering Uganda's LGBTI Community: Knowledge and Safety in the Face of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (Uganda)

6. Point of View – Feminist Tech Exchange India: Ctrl Alt Delete (India)

7. PurpleCode Collective – Feminist Tech & Activism Exchange (Indonesia)

8. Voices for Interactive Choice and Empowerment (VOICE) – Introducing Feminist Principle of the Internet on Environment in Bangladesh and Documenting Perceptions among Women and LGBTQIA+ Groups through an Online Storytelling Platform (Bangladesh)

#TechJoy continues in 2024

For our 2024 cycle, we will test giving grants on a first-come, first-served basis for proposals that meet the 2024 call criteria. As this will be a closed call, if you are an APC member or WRP partner who wants to receive notification of the call, please register here. We will distribute the new call around June 2024.

 

The Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Rights Programme (APC WRP) works to strengthen the capacity of diverse women’s movements to have the confidence, skills and resources to influence the usage, development and decision-making of the internet. This is so that they are able to engage with it as a political space to challenge discriminatory norms, structures and practices, amplify their work for women’s rights and gender justice, and respond to the barriers that prevent them from benefiting from information and communication technologies (ICTs).