Alternative girls’ center was founded almost ten years ago, and has been a birth place of many important feminists, peace-building, and educational projects and actions for girls and young women in Kruševac and Rasina districts have occurred. Also, in the last couple of years it has became well-known for its feminist philanthropy campaigns to support girls. We are talking about all these topics with Jelena Memet, one of co-founders and coordinator of the Alternative girls’ center.
RWFund News
Tamara Šmidling: Return to Solidarity and Trust
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Tamara Šmidling, an anthropologist, was born in Belgrade and lived for two decades in Sarajevo. Her main activist and professional focus are in the field of politics of memory and the ways in which societies address specific periods of their history, especially those periods of massive violence from the past. She is currently a program coordinator at Kvinna til Kvinna Foundation where she is dealing with questions of gender-based violence, women’s economic rights, sustainability, and strengthening of women’s and the feminist movement.
Paola Petrić: Solidarity is the struggle for equality and readiness to help everyone suffering injustice
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Paola Petrić is „a new woman for a new era“, Program Coordinator and Deputy Office Director of the Regional Office of Heinrich Böll Stiftung Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Paola has been dealing for years with housing policies, green economies, gender equality, and other important issues, and at the same time have also been a long-term individual donor to the women’s movement.
Tania Turner: Which side do we act from?
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Tania Turner holds a B.A. in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Political and Social Sciences from the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). She has been a monitoring and evaluation analyst for Freedom House Mexico and Research in Health, and Demographics (Insad). She is part of Rizoma Collective, focused on recovering traditional knowledge and urban gardening.
Focus on Focus: ACC Hero Maričić – Heroines of Kraljevo
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Alternative culture center “Hero Maričić” is a collective near Kraljevo. Founded on the idea of antifascism, a nonformal collective gathers diverse people as it also hosts unplugged concerts, cooking of benefit dinners for different causes (survivors of floods…), supports local young artists from local high schools providing a gallery space, hosts different lectures, photography workshops, and it is also a place of distribution of clothing for Roma population, but also a space for friendships, chatting, and a stop of many travelers.
Policy and resilience of a women’s NGO active in the field of sexual violence: Experience of Incest Trauma Center, Belgrade, Serbia
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Progressive movements strengthen and keep continuity, among other ways, by sharing knowledge and timely documenting of organizations’ work. A publication titled “Policy and resilience of a women’s NGO active in the field of sexual violence: Experience of Incest Trauma Center, Belgrade, Serbia” contributes exactly to that, and even though it is based on the working experience of a single specific organization, it still holds sets of universal information and mechanisms applicable to akin organizations, as well as a sort of workbook.
Tanja Bjelanović: Each act of giving is valuable
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Tanja Bjelanović, is an activist who work in the field of philanthropy and sustainable development for the last two decades. She lives what she believes in, so besides her professional enrollment she is an individual donor to many development organizations and many feminist causes. Her publication „Towards financial sustainability of civil sector organizations in Serbia“ explains new ideas and models of financing in the civil sector.
Focus on Focus: Jelena Jaćimović Jaćim i Aleksandra Mališić -“Hey, We Corrected This For You!“
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Exhibition “Hey, we corrected this for you!” is focused on raising awareness about the problem of secondary victimization of women survivors of sexual violence. It was exhibited in Sava pathway in Kalemegdan in March 2022, and supported through the Special Focus program. During the hype of public discourse of violence against women, as well as its inadequate answer and discussion on the topic, one of the most successful campaigns remains the initiative #nisamprijavila. The exhibition by two feminist activists, Jelena Jaćimović i Aleksandra Mališić, continues this story by giving the answer to the question „why didn’t she report it?
Regional feminist convening at Vrdnik
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For resting, for caring for yourself and your collective, and then for your communities, for all the diverse practices falling under the umbrella of this discipline, we first need to become free of the clamps of the economic instability and enable access to all the labor and social rights. It is necessary to pave the way towards care with adequate socio-political and economic principles rooted in dignified labor and social support, taking up feminist approach. Without that, practicing individual and collective care remains deprived of the essential condition for regular and continuous resting and burnout prevention, both within the movement and at the wider social level.
