2023
Grants approved – June 2023
Number of grants: 17
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1. Roma Women’s Centre Bibija, Belgrade
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Institutional support to Roma Women’s Centre Bibija
RWC Bibija has been continuously working on supporting Roma women. With this grant, Reconstruction supports the basic operative expenses of the group’s work for further uninterrupted engagement around artiuculating and promoting the rights of women and minorities, at the crucial moment when this type of support is unavailable from other donors.
2. Centre for Social Progress, Novi Sad
RSD: 447.000
Project title: The analysis of possibilities and recommendations regarding sexual education
With this project, the group plans on analyzing the existing data regarding sexual education (which systems are applied elsewhere, what are the needs in Serbia etc), systematizing the findings and use it in communication with broad public and advocating for implementation of sexual education in the formal education system. RWF supports this activity as necessary given the demonization and sabotaging sexual education in Serbia.
3. Roma Centre for Women and Children Daje, Belgrade
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Training for working with women who have survived the trauma of male violence
The supported activities imply a four-day accredited training for attendees who wish to provide better support support women survivors with violence trauma. The attendees come from Belgrade Roma and non-Roma settlements, as well as from other places, from the network of United Roma Women against Violence. RWF finds the support to such activities continually important, which is frequently re-confirmed with the escalations of violence against women, to which the women who are marginalized in multiple ways are additionally exposed.
4. Geten, Belgrade
RSD: 448.000
Project title: Building Better Times: Trauma, Violence and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia (1980 – 2020)
The activities imply Serbian translation and print preparations of Bojan Bilic’s monograph Building Better Times: Trauma, Violence and Lesbian Agency in Croatia and Serbia. The monograph, initially published in English by the British publisher Palgrave Macmillan, analyzes the history and politics of lesbian activist organizing in Serbia and Croatia between 1980 and 2020. The activities tend to promote regional LGBT acticism and strengthening the sociological approach to LGBT initiatives.
5. Kiosk, Belgrade
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Figure it out, mate: the art of survival through systemic holes
Figuring stuff out and playing with the rules becomes neccessary for surviving in the system that constinuously discriminates and produces injustices. The activities are focused on those very practices through research and collaborative artwork with women and other marginalized groups, with the goal to entice our fellow citizens to freely speak of their experiences and living conditions, and to use the collective groupwork to publicly communicate the systemic issues and the necessity of changing the system towards the feminist values of care and solidarity.
6. Web portal Echo (Odjek), Kruševac
RSD: 445.800
Project title: For better understanding
Media monitoring of civil society organization in Krusevac and Rasina District is reduced to reporting on planned and conducted activities of those organizations. When it specifically comes to women’s rights organizations, the media don’t show sufficient interest, so many important activities don’t receive the needed media attention, significant for informing and educating the wider community on the rights, problems and examples of good practices. The aim of the envisioned activities is to visibilize the activities of the civil sector, more approachable for the broader audience, and thus contribute to creating different social relationships at the local level.
7. Okular, Ćićevac
RSD: 450.000
Project: I am a feminist (too)
The planned activities include informing, educating and enticing girls and adolescents from rural areas to get engaged around the subjects of gender equality, women’s rights, anti-militarism, anti-chauvinism, through workshops and street actions. The activities are designed to encourage the participants to recognize and report on violence but to also act in prevention and encourage their friends. At the same time, the activities inform and encourage the broader audience through texts and videos written and shot by journalists from the group of youth web page „Let the voice be heard“.
8. Satibara, Belgrade
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Moved
Short documentary Moved depicts the portraits of three Ukranian women who have been living for several years in Slovakia, in Kosice, a town bordering Ukraine. Right after the Russian invasion on Ukraine on 24th February, they stepped in front of the camera, trying to articulate their inner processes, fears, hopes, as well as needs and ways of supporting women and children seeking refuge in this town. Katka is a young DJ with a motto: „You lose everything and you find yourself“, Kristina has just graduated from architecture studies, and she has been writing a diary since early childhood, while Viktorija is a former kindergarden teacher who is now devoted to opening a Centre for supporting mothers and children refugees from Ukraine. The film highlights their self-reflection, throughts of the war, migrations, home, women’s issues, nationalism, sense of belonging, empathy and solidarity.
9. Village Cultural Centre Markovac
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Demilitarizing plays – festival of stage readings
Gender-just library „Ekaterina Pavlović“ organizes the first edition of festival of public stage readings of plays, aimed at the community of experts, but also at the wide audience, chosen based on their subjects (demilitarizing daily lives), authorship (plays written by women), agitating for gender and other justices when it comes to production aspect (number of roles written for women, children, minorities), marginalization (priority is given to plays which, for various reasons, have reduced chances of being publicly presented in our environment).
10. Collective Talas TIGV, Belgrade
RSD: 449.800
Project title: Free moves – creative art workshops for TIGV people
The activities imply organizing and leading art workshops for TIGV people with the goal of strengthening and developing the community through creating a safe space for artistic expression, socialozing peer support and empowerment. The activities are devoted to TIGV people living in Serbia. They encompass four cycles of workshops thematically divided into separate chunks. The participants will also have chance to, during the four months, use diverse art techniques for dealing with general and trans subjects to explore the feeling of self and their environment.
11. „Beton“ editorial staff
RSD: 432.500
Project title: Beton – Phase 3
The aim of the planned activities is to enable the functioning of the Beton newspaper after it ceised to be published in print, now aiming to be entirely in the online sphere. In other words, the aim is to start the third phase of of Beton’s work through modernization and renovating the website elektrobeton.net in order to enable the further existence of Beton.
12, Successful Women of Kostolac
RSD: 450.000
Project title: I am a woman, not a slave
The activities imply training 10 young women, representatives of 5 organizations, who would conduct research and workshops regarding gender based violence in family and society in their local environments. Training is accompanied by continual mentorship support. The participants are members of five Roma women’s organizations, members of the network of United Roma Women against Violence.
13. Women’s Association NIKA, Bor
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Creativity in preserving mental health
The planned activities imply working-occupational therapies aiming to improve attendees’ psycho-physical health, empowering them, as well as workshops for sensiotizing the community with the aim of de-marginalization of users, both within their families and the overall community, which includes the decision-makers and institutions. Target audience encompasses all whohave survived any type of violence, people with disabilities, LGBTQI people, women and children who have previously used the association’s services and who are continuing to use the support through working-occupational therapy, women from rural areas.
14. WA Teuta-tim, Trstenik
RSD: 450.000
Project title: Safe women, safe society
The activities are directed towards empowering women from Trstenik and its surroundings, as well as on empowering the members of WA Teuta-tim. During the six months, there will be two programs of psychological support, aimed at improving and preserving women’s mental health. Confined environments are frequently discriminated against regarding accessible support. The patriarchal culture and values take away the opportunity for women’s self-care, as they mainly direct their psychological capacities at others. The group wishes to provide support to women from this small town, as self-care is a feminist issue.
15. Collective Action A Roof above Head
RSD: 449.000
Project title: Speak loudly and take a lawyer with you II
Collective action A Roof above Head continues struggle in the field of unfair evictions. Communal enterprises and rich creditors go against the minimal socially responsible law provisions to earn on the poor and discriminated. But they do not expect that they will be supported by activists and lawyers. CA A Roof above Head keeps on providing legal support to those unable to pay for it in order to set themselves free from unfairly blown up or non-existent debts.
16. Women’s Centre Užice
RSD: 150.000
Project title: Retex – Ecofeminism in action
With this grant, RWF supports the work of Retex in bridging a period with insufficient funding. Retex is an innovative centre for reusing second-hand textile within Women’s Centre in Užice. The role of Retex has several layers – the organization supports the community to solve the problem of second-hand textile in an ecological way, it supports poor citizens in obtaining second-hand clothing, shoes and home textile, it enables the financial security of women from multiply marginalized groups who work in Retex. Retex is made of two antities – humanitarian service for collecting and donating the usable parts of textile and a workshop for upcycling the non-usable parts of textile.
17. Women’s Studies and Research, chapter in Subotica
RSD: 449.600
Project title: Women’s Studies 2023
The goal of Women’s Studies 2023 in Subotica is to use the alternative higher-education program of Women’s Studies for continuation of educating the network of collaborators, locally and in the region, and empower them for further research and activist work, directed at creating knowledge and documentation regarding women, history and women’s contributions, especially of those from multiply-dicriminated groups. This way, we are establishing a dialogue continuity between the attendees and lecturers (experts), among themselves and in the relationship with the (scientific) public.
