drawing resistance and resilience

This week-long online campaign in December 2020 highlighted locally driven initiatives to address gender-based violence.

Using graphic narratives, “drawing resistance and resilience” aimed to depict how structurally excluded communities organized, intervened, and resisted issues of violence along with highlighting powerful stories of change and learnings, especially in the COVID-19 context.

The All Women Count consortium, a former consortium that CREA led, collected nine stories and worked with six illustrators based in the global South to capture these stories of resilience and learning, which were shared on CREA’s social media channels.

The illustrated stories explored broad themes of gender-based violence, queer mental health issues, sex workers’ rights, access to essentials and justice, and more.

All Women Count (AWC) partners have been working in 2020 on addressing gender-based violence (GBV). As we are aware, COVID-19 and the state regulations to address the pandemic through lockdowns have led to increased vulnerabilities and risk of violence globally.

Marginalized communities that AWC works with have experienced an exacerbated impact of vulnerability to various kinds of gender-based violence. While these communities have faced numerous challenges during the ongoing pandemic, they have also been resilient and AWC has witnessed some inspiring community driven efforts.

From 16 December – 21 December 2020, the online campaign will highlight locally driven initiatives to address these challenges. Using graphic narratives, “Drawing Resistance and Resilience” aims to depict how marginalized communities have organized, intervened and resisted issues of violence along with highlighting powerful stories of change and learnings especially in the current COVID-19 context.

AWC collected nine stories and worked with six illustrators based in the global South to capture these stories of resilience and learning, which will beshared on CREA’s social media channels – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The illustrated stories explore broad themes of gender-based violence, queer mental health issues, sex workers’ rights, access to essentials and justice and more. The campaign will feature illustrations by Gift Kyansimare, Ishita Mehra, Nancy Cherwon, Ojoswi Sur, Sonaksha Iyengar and Sreejita Biswas.

View and download the Drawing Resistance and Resilience graphic narratives below.