Global Dialogues - convenings
Global Dialogues
Critical Spaces to Think and Act: CREA’s Global Dialogues
The 13 global dialogues CREA has organized since 2004 weave together decades of conversations by feminist activists who have helped push limits and break boundaries. They have challenged the ability of women’s movements to become more inclusive of lesbian, trans people, women with disabilities and sex workers. They have clarified points of confusion, such as how policy frameworks can adopt consent as a sexual standard, or understanding gender-based violence as both a health and human rights issue.
The impact of CREA’s global dialogues stretches far beyond the boundaries of time and space where each conversation is held. New relationships and collaborations are fostered that endure for years. Documentation of learnings and recommendations coming out a global dialogue become valuable resources for other activists and organizations. Most importantly, activists, donors and other movement actors shift their views and approaches in response to what they have learned.
Impact and Value of Global Dialogues
Challenging Discourse
Global dialogues provide space and visibility for ideas and strategies from people not perceived as “experts,” but who work at a grassroots level and have deep knowledge of how frameworks and strategies get translated on the ground. They are able to challenge the dominant discourse around sexuality, gender and rights.
Example: Subaltern Voices Seminar Series (2006-2007) provided a forum for grassroots women leaders from the Global South to speak to audiences in the United States on issues of women’s human rights from feminist, Southern-based perspectives.
Producing and Disseminating New Knowledge
CREA captures content discussed at global dialogues in knowledge products that build on the original conversation and reach a broader set of stakeholders. Reports are often translated into other languages, including Spanish, French, Arabic, and Kiswahili, while new digital tools allow wide dissemination of global dialogue learnings.
Example: Short videos produced from the Global Dialogue on Disability, Sexuality and Rights summarize key themes covered in multiple accessible formats.
Sparking Collaborations
By bringing people together to think and act, dialogues spark collaborations across regions, disciplines, and movements. Many of these newly built relationships have led to joint initiatives and deeper alliances around sexuality, gender and rights.
Example: Following dialogues on sex work in 2008-2009, Point of View and Sangram collaborated to produce a publication titled Of Veshyas, Vamps, Whores and Women.
Influencing donors
Donors are always represented in CREA’s global dialogues as a strategy to influence funders’ thinking and shift their approaches to issues, constituencies, and strategies.
Example: Donor participation in 2009’s “Ain’t I a Woman” dialogue and dissemination of its outcome paper paved the way for shifts in how women’s rights funders viewed sex workers. Soon after, Mama Cash decided to seed the Red Umbrella Fund, the first global fund exclusively dedicated to supporting the sex workers’ movement.
Bridging Divides Within and Between Movements
Global dialogues are safe spaces for honest, sometimes painful analysis of the current state of the global feminist movement that can break conceptual or strategic impasses. Clarity gained can help movements reexamine frameworks or positions on key issues.
Example: In the early 2000s, global dialogues between sex workers and violence-against-women activists prompted a rethinking of the view that sex work is inherently exploitative and synonymous with trafficking, and produced non-negotiable principles that both movements could agree to follow.
