Unsung Heroes: Interlude

Partway through the Unsung Heroes series, it seems like a good time to stop for a brief interlude and a slight shift in focus.

You see, so far this collection of posts has centred on exceptional individuals who’ve done unique things and make for fascinating stories. However, whilst it’s great to give these figures the attention they deserve, and maybe to take some inspiration from their stories, the flow of events rarely rests on the actions of just one person. Lasting change is brought about by the ongoing work of countless people fighting for it on a daily basis.

This post, then, is about those people; people who are getting on with the everyday business of making change happen. That ranges from people who work in charities, NGOs, and support organisations; people who lobby and campaign; and people who are acting on the change they’d like to see in their interactions with the people around them.

So here, then, are just some of the many organisations run by awesome people, doing awesome things on a daily basis.

• African Feminist Forum – They run biennial conferences for feminist activists in Africa, and make efforts to include the voices of groups often marginalised within African feminism (and arguably feminist movements in many countries) – commercial sex workers, women with disabilities, and bisexual rights activists.
• Central American Women’s Network – They’re working to improve the political, social and cultural rights of women in Central America through advocacy and campaigning, and raising awareness in the UK and US. Freedoms in Honduras have been a particular issue since the coup d’etat of 2009.
• Women’s Budget Group  – Based in the UK, they’re bringing gender analysis to economic policy, because it’s hard to work for an equal society when the vast impact of government expenditure is skewed in favour of one portion of the population.
• British Insitute of Human Rights – Because human rights for everyone is very much a feminist issue, and the BIHR are one of several fantastic groups supporting that. (See also: Liberty, Amnesty International)
• Race On The Agenda – Too often the history of feminist discussion has been marred by an unfortunate exclusion of the voices from often-marginalised groups such as the Black and Asian communities. ROTA are one of the organisations helping to keep things more inclusive.
• Powerhouse – Women with disabilities are another group that’s been too often pushed to one side or rendered invisible. Run “by and for women with learning disabilities”, Powerhouse bring focus to this.
• The Feminist Library – Libraries are basically the most awesome things ever, and this one carries a huge stock of feminist literature. It should hardly need explaining why this is an entire industrial-sized vat of pure brilliance.
• The Survivor Project – I want to include these folk, because judging from what I’ve read they’re awesome, but unfortunately they seem to be without a website currently, so, er, you’ll have to find them yourselves later. They’re a non-profit working against domestic and sexual violence against anyone, but with a particular focus on trans* and intersex survivors. It’s an issue that’s all too often ignored in the mainstream. (If in the future a website becomes available, hopefully we’ll be able to draw attention to it.)

This list isn’t even remotely exhaustive, and couldn’t possibly hope to be. There are more people out there working to support good ideas than I have any chance of adequately enumerating here. The fact that I can only post a tiny, miniscule example of some of the many groups and organisations involved in this is, honestly, brilliant. It’d be a worrying sign if every beneficial organisation could be summed up in the space of one post. For more comprehensive overviews of the groups out there though, do check the members list for the Women’s Resource Centre and the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations. (Of course, that only covers groups based at least partially in the UK. The list gets even longer when we go global.)

And then of course there’s the fact that the above list has only covered organisations, groups, and charities. We’ve yet to even touch on the vast array of feminist bloggers, writers, artists, and others out there making their ideas visible. Or the yet wider group who don’t have a public podium from which to spread their message but are engaged in thinking about, discussing and living with this as a part of their daily world view.

What I’m saying is that there’s a lot of us, and the collective weight behind this set of ideas is formidable. And that’s seven shades of kickass.

• Unsung Heroes: spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school. Rob Mulligan also blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes, or send your own in to [email protected]!