Young Asian Women's Leadership Forum (YWLF) Bali, Indonesia Nov 2-5, 2008

The Young Asian Women’s Leadership Forum 2008 is a collective, integrative and necessary regional initiative that aims to address, deconstruct and provide viable solutions and alternatives to the challenges facing young women leaders of the Asian women’s movements. As elsewhere, the Asian women’s movements are led by women who emerged as leaders in the 1970s and 1980s.

Their themes, their methods of organizing, their conceptual tools have so far dominated the movements. Similarly Women’s Studies in Asian universities are faced with a generation gap. There is an urgent need for the continuation, expansion and creation of rich Asian feminisms incorporating the needs, methods and concepts of young women. In the face of the highly patriarchal and hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and fundamentalisms, young women have to find their voices.The forum will provide a safe, nurturing and mutually supportive peer based environment that will enable young women from Asia to develop a nuanced understanding of feminisms within a regionally contextual and topically relevant framework.

The forum will be held in Bali, Indonesia from 2-5 November 2008. It will be an integral component of the Kartini conference’s focus on the future of Asian feminisms.

Major Objectives of the YYF:

• Identifying, organizing and orienting young feminist leaders from all over Asia for a sustained and active network for working on women’s issues.

• Alignment of the young talent, research, innovation and initiative in line with the ongoing women’s movement, to make it stronger, more visible, larger and inclusive with the fresh influx of young blood.

• Establishing the much required link between the three major generations of feminisms, the ‘been there done that’, ‘the movers and shakers of the present’ and the ‘exploring, opening and kindling fires’.

Thematic Focus:

1. Identity Politics: Gender, Embodiment and Hetero-normativity

2. Break the Silence: Express yourself, don’t repress yourself: Re-examining women’s sexuality, sexual rights and gendered language/ silence in women’s movements and academia

3. Another World is Possible: De- Gendering Poverty, Livelihoods and Neoliberal Development Discourse

4. The Art of Peace

5. Standing on the shoulders of giants: bridging the genertion gap

6. Circles of Affinity

7. The Future of Asian Feminisms

For more information email: yff@kartiniasia@gmail.com

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Panaghoy ng Naghahanap: A Sharing of Experiences of Families of the Desaparecidos

In observance of the International Day of the Disappeared, the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) will host a roundtable discussion on the 29^th of August 200 with mothers, sisters, and daughters of the victims of enforced disappearances. It will be held at the UP Balay Kalinaw, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City from 9:00 a.m.-12:00nn . Entitled Panaghoy ng Naghahanap: A Sharing of Experiences of Families of the Desaparecidos, the activity is a venue for sharing of experiences of the families and how they cope with the situation.

CWR is a research and training institution for and by women. Since its inception, CWR has actively promoted the rights of women through advocacy and services such as education, training, research and publication. Part of the advocacy work of CWR is the promotion of human rights, especially in cases and situations where women are affected.

The activity will gather women and human rights advocates from the academe, non-government organizations, government agencies, church and media.

We hope you will join us to show our solidarity with the families of desaparecidos.

For inquiries, please contact Di, Teta, or Osang through 411-2796 or 920-1373.