In celebration of legacies and collective leadership, you’re invited to cross the line with JASS!
We’re living in a moment when women are once again, rising up against the lines, boxes and silences that hold them back and discount them. Though “resistance” has now entered our conversations at a time of hateful politics, women also quietly push back every day against the small and humorous ways that families, workplaces and public life dismiss, exclude and violate. When women cross the line together they are stronger and safer knowing they have each other’s back.
JASS celebrates, embraces, teaches and organizes women to cross the line. Building women’s collective power for a more just and sustainable world for all is, in essence, the art and science of crossing the line. Even JASS, our amazing local-to-global network of networks, crosses the line by upending who’s the expert, how we lead, how we work!
This is why we’re excited to invite you to join us in launching the Women Crossing the Line Fund and community at a pivotal moment in JASS’ history. A big leadership transition as our Founding ED steps down and our new ED takes the helm. We are launching Women Crossing the Line today to honor not only Lisa VeneKlasen but also the tremendous legacies of our many co-founders and our particular emphasis on the collective leadership we practice and we preach. We’ve learned by doing that the resilience and reach essential to movements and 21st century organizations on the cutting edge of crisis and change demand shared and distributed leadership. We’ve been sustained and grown with careful attention the alchemy of longstanding relationships of political trust, big ideas, and a shared commitment to thinking outside the box. Together, we have ensured that grassroots women activists and feminist ideas are at the heart of struggles over land, water, climate, corruption, health care, and violence.
In creating the Women Crossing the Line Fund we seek to recognize and engage our broad network of supporters who, with us, are imagining and building another world with women at the center, and without whom JASS’ success would not be possible.
Through the Women Crossing the Line Fund, we aim to raise $1 million dollars in the next 5 years starting with $100,000 in 2019-2020 to support the kind of work that formal funding often leaves out:
- The creation of “Women Crossing the Line” community radio programs: In contexts where private or state actors control and manipulate media and narratives, often the only way that communities can access information and connect is through traditional or under-the-radar methods. We will replicate the success of our “Tercas con Esperanza” (“Stubborn Women with Hope”) program in Honduras in Malawi (2020), and Zimbabwe and Indonesia in 2021.
- The launch of a “training of trainers” and mentorship program that will tap into the wisdom of JASS founders and builders to multiply the next generation of feminist organizers who specialize in forging common ground around respect for differences.
- The recruitment of a staff person dedicated to making sure that you are fully informed and up to date with what women are doing on the frontlines of crises and change from our perspective.
JASS’ and women’s collective leadership and power remain the hope and promise for a better future. Cross the line with us by making a donation today.
