When they go low...…went the advice, we go high.

(But we all know how that end-ed.) Instead, in a world roiled by war and cruelty and bitter divi-sions, CREA acted counterintui-tively at the 15th AWID Forum held in Bangkok (December 2-5, 2024).

Our first initiative was a simple invitation to ‘show some love’. At one lounge, we put up no slogans, distributed no brochures, uttered no high-minded words. Instead, we invited people to show some love in a time of hate. Against a colorful backdrop dedicated to all humans, CREA’s ‘A Love Letter for…’ initiative presented an alternative call to action. The response was astounding. Visitors wrote ‘love notes’ to persons they were think-ing of, missing, loving. Many wept as they wrote. We stuck each note on to our backdrop. Finally, there was no space; note was stuck upon note, the whole backdrop bristling with notes filled with emotion. We carefully peeled each off and car-ried the precious cargo back (634 notes, in multiple languages). The project hasn’t ended.

At the ‘Platform Accountability Lab’, CREA and Point of View urged folks to rethink how data misuse affects structurally excluded com-munities. Elsewhere, at the sex workers’ gallery, visitors left their thumbprint on the ‘tree of solidarity’ for the Kathmandu Declaration created at Renew (see pg. 4).

We held multiple events. One titled ‘Shrinking Spaces or Invis-ible Spaces?’ was a hybrid-format activity for women with disabilities, co-created by CREA, Rising Flame and Women’s Fund Asia. Under the Our Voices, Our Futures consortium, we hosted a reception to launch The Full Picture Campaign on misinfor-mation/disinformation. At a work-shop co-created by Amnesty, CREA, Resurj, IWRAW and Intersecta, participants reflected on punitive responses to gender-based violence. And we were at ‘Practising Disability Justice in GBV Responses: What Feminists Need to Understand and Do Better’, organized by Women Gaining Ground partner, Akili Dada.