Who
we
and who we are becoming
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Love is Diversity, a grantee partner from Cambodia, celebrating IDAHOBIT in 2022
are
Reality check!
techniques became the anchor for a moving performance delivered by the NOW-Us! Award winners and organizers to close the Partos Innovation Festival 2022. Another significant moment of reconnection was the Voice Annual Reflection Meeting organised after a gap of 2-years in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As in pre-COVID times, the annual reflection meeting is the only instance in the entire year where all Voice team members come together to pause, reflect and re- fresh on values and principles, ways of working, and bonds across the vast nodal network that is Voice.
(Jeuness’ART, Mali) and digital media (NEARY, Cambodia) to raise awareness against gender-based violence and negative gender ste- reotypes to creating a TV series to dispel stigma around mental health issues (WeCare, Laos) and facilitat- ing women with disabilities from the pastoralist community in leadership development (NONDO, Kenya). The common thread running through these initiatives is the importance of shifting cultural narratives towards advancing inclusion, and the great power of artivism to enable these shifts. At the bootcamp, the Butterfly Works team facilitated the 11 partic- ipants to exchange learnings about diversity and inclusion, creative storytelling techniques, artivism, project management and funding. The exchange of creative storytelling
Strength and beauty in diversity With cautious optimism and due regard to safety, we stepped into 2022 aiming to be in closer connection with our partners, key stakeholders and team members. And undoubtedly, the most inspirational moments of the year were those where we could be in community. The ‘in-person’ events best exemplified our principled belief that there is strength and beauty in diversity. The Global Nothing About Us Without Us (NOW-Us!) Awards Bootcamp 2022 was a particular highlight. It brought together 11 activists representing first place winners of the NOW-Us! Awards and the NOW-Us! Awards organisers from Cambodia, Kenya, Laos, Mali and Tanzania at the Butterfly Works facilities in Amsterdam for five days in October. Over 2021-2022, the award winners have been implementing innovative ideas to further social inclusion for their communi- ties. These initiatives range from using slam poetry
The basis of our collective work at the annual reflection meeting was the context analysis update 2022, the final such exercise for the Voice extension phase. While in previous years, the context analysis update had been the primary source of consultation with the national Community of Stakeholders on the situation of the five rightsholder groups Voice serves, in 2022 the premise of the context analysis update was a ‘reality check’. As country teams, we asked ourselves: are we really reaching those left most behind? Who did we not reach and how could we reach them better in the future? How were the rightsholder groups impacted by
Stella Cheboi posing with artwork she created at the Global NOW-Us! Bootcamp 2022
“The more different and diverse we are, the more beautiful we become when we co-exist, and co-create and find a way to have each of us involved by contributing to the process through leveraging on each person’s strengths.” STELLA CHEBOI, EMERGING LEADERS FOUNDATION (ELF) AFRICA, SHARING HER TAKEAWAYS FROM THE GLOBAL NOW-US! BOOTCAMP 2022
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