Grants
Getting a new public program off the ground requires funds, technical know-how and promotional marketing: resources many women’s organizations do not necessarily have. The Coalition’s Project Support Fund aims to rectify this problem by providing financial and programmatic assistance to Sites of Conscience that want to elevate the voices and build the capacity of women in their communities. In recent years, PSFs have been awarded to intergenerational theater projects that highlight the experiences of Cambodian victims of forced marriage and sexual and gender-based violence and exhibitions that uncover the stories of female detainees in Argentina.
Kdei Karuna, Cambodia
Forced marriage and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) were central components of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime in Cambodia, which left up to 2 million people dead between 1975-1979. As devastating as these crimes were, they often remain overlooked in Cambodian history, considered irrelevant or incidental to other atrocities committed by the regime. With its 2017 PSF grant, Coalition member Kdei Karuna created a theater program with the goal of ending this silence.
Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, United States
The 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York State provided an opportunity for partnership with the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls to create an exhibition about the little-known story of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) influence on the women’s rights movement. “This PSF grant provides us not only with the ability to carry out our original goal but to build further partnerships with two Haudenosaunee museums in our area, where this story will also be told,” said Sally Wagner, Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.
Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA, Argentina
The site of Argentina’s largest former clandestine torture center was one of the 2018 Project Support Fund Awardees. A permanent exhibition focusing on the roles of women in ESMA was developed entitled Being Women at ESMA, and opened on March 14, 2019. As a result of this project, ESMA produced a toolkit, Ser Mujeres en la ESMA which shares the mission, vision, and lessons learned from the exhibition.
This toolkit is available in Spanish. To download, click here.
Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance's "LGBT History", Dominican Republic
In 2018, Memorial Museum of the Dominican Resistance was awarded a PSF for a project related to LGBT History in the Dominican Republic. Museum staff researched, analyzed and shared stories about the repression of LGBT communities during the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship and how these practices continue today. After gathering and exhibiting their findings, the Museum produced a toolkit, Homofobia, Represión y Resistencia Durante la Dictadura de Rafael Trujillo en República Dominicana y sus Efectos en la Sociedad Actual.
This toolkit is available in Spanish. To download, click here.
