In keeping with its overall reflective approach, the Voice team considered the language it uses and how it can be a medium to create relationships that are more equal, trusting, and open. One of the ways in which this was expressed was a change in terminology from targets and beneficiaries to rightsholder groups as part of a larger shift to hope based communications. As Marinke van Riet, states in her blog ‘The language of power, the power of language’ the recognition “ ...indicates the innate and legitimate claim they [rightsholder] can make to demand their roles and rights for an inclusive society.” “Yet, as Ruth Kimani and Sheila Mulli, members of the Voice grant-making team, observe in their blog, unscripted musings in grant-making, the term rightsholders needs to be contextualised. “In the spirit of oneness and contributing to just and fair societies, aren’t we all rightsholders? While each rightsholder’s journey is unique, we are all journeying together and finding ways to enjoy prosperity.”
So, we’re all rightsholders, and we organise or group ourselves when necessary to join forces to solve issues specific to us, voicing our needs and rights. Within the five rightsholder groups, and intersectional ties which Voice has sought to further “unpeel” to align with its own understanding and body of work as a fund. For instance, a young person from an indigenous/ ethnic minority community, ravaged by poverty and with poor access to social and economic amenities could be living with a disability while also identifying as gay or bisexual or intersex. By centring the lived reality of rightsholders in the programme approach, cross-connections among grantee partners representing rightsholder groups, or the surfacing of diversity within a rightsholder group does has not had to be directed by Voice. The rightsholders evolve mechanisms of managing these inter and intra-realities in their own organic way. It is the reality that the grantee partners Voice supports, live, breathe and identify with and foster.
Voice partners: The rightsholder groups Voice serves
“Research and context analysis supported the identification of the main groups to be served by Voice. A determination was based on factors including those who are most affected by poverty or making the least progress towards development outcomes (SDGs), those most affected by social, economic, spatial, and political exclusion, currently ignored or not reached by development actors, and those whose groups and representatives are at risk of repression or violence for speaking out for their rights. Over the course of its first 5 years, Voice’s own understanding and framing of those it seeks to serve has evolved considerably.
“Inkeeping with the agenda to support those community groups that have traditionally faced marginalisation and discrimination in access to development initiatives, the rightsholders groups Voice serves, includepeople with disabilities, women facing exploitation, abuse and/ or violence, indigenous people and ethnic minorities, vulnerable elderly and youth, and LGBTI people. 4 In the different Voice focus countries, these groups are among those who have fewer opportunities, are less valued, and are living the effects of discrimination and marginalisation in their families, surroundings, or society at large.”
4 This is the original abbreviation used in the programme document. However, some grant- ee partners or Voice countries also use LGBTIQ+ people or LBQ (Lesbian Bisexual or Queer) women
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