Solidarity: Embodied and Enacted - Learning with the Rural Women's Assembly
We are pleased to share that the report for the workshop Solidarity: Embodied and Enacted – Learning with the Rural Women's Assembly is now available. It has been almost a year since this insightful workshop, held for the Southern African region as part of the Global Health Solidarity project.
The three-day workshop brought together 30 participants from nine countries across Southern Africa to examine solidarity in the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA) as a lived, political, and practical process, linking personal experience, collective struggle, and organisational practice. Notably, the workshop built on a prior series of online workshops where RWA members selected and developed country-level case studies showcasing the many ways RWA embodies and enacts solidarity through their work addressing key environmental and social challenges. The report provides a synthesis of the key discussion points and reflections from the workshop including:
- The Summer School positioned rural women’s knowledge, seed practices, and expertise as critical sources for rethinking solidarity in relation to global health.
- Case studies from nine countries demonstrated solidarity in practice through coordinated responses to climate disasters, land dispossession, food insecurity, gender-based violence and political instability – showing how collective action in solidarity involves showing up to provide material, emotional and political support to address immediate needs while enabling ongoing agency and self-determination.
- Discussions highlighted that solidarity is not neutral or risk-free; it involves sacrifice, confrontation with power, and sustained infrastructure-building to protect activists, support communities, and maintain movements over time.
- During the workshop, solidarity was consistently distinguished from charity. Unlike charity, solidarity is seen as a long-term, participatory process that builds collective agency and challenges hierarchy, and unequal power dynamics. Thus, solidarity aligns with radical feminist values and practices, rather than reinforcing dependency.
Solidarity: Embodied & Enacted - Learning with the Rural Women's Assembly Report
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