December 12th and 13th of 2019 were very special to Fe-Male’s team because they were finally able to meet with the team of their first ever donor, FRIDA- The Young Feminist Fund. As FRIDA planned to conduct a research which explores the contribution of its funding over the past 5 years to changes within young feminist groups, as well as the changes catalyzed by young feminist organizing, they reached out to Fe-Male, the only organization in the MENA region, as a grantee partner for several years and one of these groups.
FRIDA team visited in Lebanon, and the main goal of the visit was to gather information to be used in a written report and short video both featuring the feminist groups targeted from across all regions to demonstrate the importance of providing quality (long term, core, flexible) funding to emerging young feminist-led groups, as well of course to illustrate their contributions to change in their context. Through this research, FRIDA wanted to feature Fe-Male’s evolution and its work while being interested in understanding the experience of groups that have been continuously supported by FRIDA in the last few years. Accordingly, FRIDA conducted a two-day workshop with Fe-Males’ team that aimed to honor the ways in which FRIDA’s grantee partner have evolved, and learn how to better support current and future grantee partners.
This workshop was facilitated by Kirsten, a researcher from Recrear International through which the sessions combined experiential learning exercises, systems thinking tools and participatory processes to enable participants to reflect about different elements of Fe-Male’s growth journey. Kirsten also ran more in-depth interviews with 3 members of Fe-Male’s team, and learned about the insights during their membership time with Fe-Male.
The learning visit was also accompanied by a storytelling and filming process which documented the day-to-day activities of the co-founders of Fe-Male, and how they manage to promote gender-equality and spread feminist knowledge when dealing with people.