WOMEN’S NEXUS
A Collaboration Proposal for Women Empowerment Initiatives in Greece
This document is an initiative for the coordination of women-centered movements, grassroot initiatives, organisations and programs in Greece. If you are in contact with such a group of people, please forward them this open call so that we may find each other.
We spent the past months reaching out to various initiatives at the crossroads between social development and women empowerment movements. We seem to all agree on our desire for collaboration and mutual support, so we wanted to suggest to you an organised initiative between us.
We suggest the name “Women’s Nexus”, in order to make it our common ground, dissociated from our own initiatives’ brands. Of course, at this stage it is a suggestion and if you have alternative ideas, we can throw them all in the mix and submit the final decision to a vote.
What this would mean between us is that we agree to communicate, coordinate and share tools and information in a way that will allow us to grow and have a mainstream impact as a collective, which will result in more impact overall for each of our initiatives too.
I. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US: AS INITIATIVES, ORGANISATIONS AND AS INDIVIDUAL WOMEN BEHIND THE MOVEMENTS
1. AN OPEN INVITATION FOR COMMUNICATION & COORDINATION
– in order to support each other’s initiative
– facilitate introductions to outside collaborators
– unite around common objectives on the regular
– unite resources and skills in matters of content production or tools development
– recruit specialists among us for project-based job opportunities that we engage in.
– share knowledge and experience when it comes to approaching complexe development goals linked to heavy bureaucracy, niche technology or other complex specialized matters.
2. A TRIMESTRIAL NEXUS MEETING OR VIDEO CALL TO CHECK IN ON OUR PROGRESS
– In order to keep a humane relationship
– Analyze our collective data
– Map it into a clear agenda
– Discuss outside factors of influences linked to global, national or local issues
– Take organized action and review it periodically as we advance in order to avoid getting stuck in outdated or biased methodologies and ideologies linked to our development goals.
3. AN ORGANIZED REPRESENTATION OF WHAT WE EACH HAVE TO OFFER AS INITIATIVES – AND WHAT/HOW WE OFFER TO SHARE IT WITH OUR NETWORK, EITHER AS TOOLS OR AS OPEN CALLS FOR COLLABORATION
– Data collection & modeling
– Activity reports
– Tool kits
– Open calls & collaboration offers
– Events
– Casual advice and social engagement as a support group for women who organize women’s networks.
4. HOW WE ARE DEVELOPING
– Introduction to our values and methodologies
– Our points of struggle
– Our new development directions and brainstorming around their accomplishment (as initiatives and/or as a nexus).
5. HOW CAN WE SHARE OUR PROGRESS WITH THE ENTIRE MOVEMENT
– clear tools lists
– clear project lists
– clear progress reports
> In order to facilitate this data sharing process, we can develop a set of template documents that we can each use in order to collect our lists and reports. This will take some weeks, but if we can already agree on this, it would be an amazing start.
6. HOW CAN WE COLLABORATE IN EACH TRIMESTER
– Trimestrial nexus coordination projects
– Trimestrial tools
– Progressive Playbook development allowing us to map our entire collaboration.
III. OTHER IMPORTANT POINTS TO DISCUSS TO ALLOW US A FLOWING, TRANSPARENT AND BULLETPROOF COLLABORATION
1. OBJECTIVE OF COORDINATION FOR REPRESENTATION & CONTENT PRODUCTION
One of the main development goals of our nexus is to keep up with the public’s need for high quality content production that focuses on women’s empowerment. It is the main way we can be seen and perceived by the public, yet there is yet no actual Greek media that serve a purpose of serving women’s issues from a humanitarian point of view. If anything, media serve the opposite effect, perpetuating the sexualisation and devaluation of women in all spheres and industries. We might not be able to individually create a mainstream voice that is able to act as an established medium of influence, but we might be able to reach that mainstream status and production quality as a group, allowing us to each put a production stone to our collective voice.
Our suggestion is to make sure that we coordinate our content production and channels, so that collectively we create content of professional quality able to rival with the best publication groups.
We can list and exchange our skillsets and existing starting points to see who will be able to improve what area of our content production and make sure that we cross-promote our voices on the regular in order to gain outreach.
This is a discussion to post on our agenda, which I am sure we will want to discuss at length, past this introduction email.
2. FAIR RESOURCE COORDINATION
Funding and resources are the most common topic of frustration or trouble – as women I am sure that we have all felt like we were not compensated fairly for our professional contribution on more than one occasion. I know that as someone who spends most of my life focusing on pro-bono work while stepping up for the recognition of women’s contribution to well paid work, I have a habit of setting clear ground rules when it comes to potential collective fund management or grant applications.
In the past years, I have developed and applied a fair share model that I would love to introduce you to, so that if we ever are to consider collaborations on funded European Union projects, paid positions, or projects linked to commercial activities or for-profit activities of any kind, we have ground rules to agree on that will take away any stress about negotiations and grey areas about cross-contributions between us.
This too as a topic on its own, would benefit from its own discussion.
Conclusion
WHAT’S NEXT?
If the content of this post, and the initial plan behind this possible nexus is something that resonates with your initiative, I suggest the following steps to get started:
1. ARE YOU IN?
Reply a quick email to info@ivunited.org or through the messenger of the page Business Women’s Circle about your initial thoughts and potential remarks about this collective development plan. Include please whether you are set on planning action now or if you need some time to think about it. If you need to think about it, please give us a time period after which we can reach out to you again for an answer regarding your participation.
2. UNITE FURTHER
– Share this post with all other founders of NON-PROFIT women empowerment initiatives in Greece or focused on Greek women abroad that you know personally.
– Try to do this within a week-long period following this email.
3. LET’S DO IT
– We schedule a first video call with every new partner, once we have received an answer with everyone’s participation.
– For the meeting, prepare a short overview of your initiative. Get ready to discuss long-term plans with no sense of urgency or pressure to accomplish everything right away. We will get organized for the long-term, with respect to everyone’s time availability and work load.
– Every three months we gather or conduct a videoconference call with all new partners, in order to go over our respective plans and mutual agenda.
4. FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS
Let’s already agree to schedule two more initial meetings in order to discuss subjects of:
> EGO: aka personal representation, brand representation, division of media attention, recognition of everyone’s contribution etc.
> FUNDING MANAGEMENT: aka how we will make sure that we are clear from the start on how we will collaborate in a way that makes financial matters crystal clear so that we never get into discords because of it, and so that a 100% of our attention can be dedicated to our cause.
With these two discussions, we should overpower the two most common points of discords that collectives can get in conflict for, and hopefully make us start on an amazing clean slate for collaboration.
All the best to you ladies, I hope we can do amazing things together as we move forward.
C O N T A C T
PUBLISHED BY IVunited – A Non-Profit Organization
based in Greece
WITH THE HELP OF
IVWomen – An IVunited Project
with a Focus on Gender Equality
and Womxn Empowerment
Business Women’s Circle Greece – A community
working towards
the professional and collective development
of women in Greece
Tags : Cooperation, Gender Equality.
Categories : Projects, Open Calls.
Recommended posts for you
