One Future Post #11: Conversation, community, and transformative action
Contents
Hello From the CEO
Spotlight Story
What’s New?
Coming Soon!
Art x Social Justice
From the Toolbox
Get Involved
Hello From the CEO
What happens to communities sustaining social justice movements when their objective shifts from surviving to thriving? How does art, culture, and conversation facilitate this shift? Welcome to Volume 11 of One Future Post, where we reflect on what we’ve achieved over the last two months, and what we’ve learned about honouring our resistance and building joyful communities. I hope this message resonates.
Love,
Vandita Morarka
Founder and CEO, One Future Collective
Spotlight
This month at One Future Collective, we were in many exciting places that helped us take away important lessons in the power of dialogue and community. Vandita, our Founder and CEO, was onboarded as an Advisory Committee member at Pleasure Project and completed the IVLP 2024 program in the US. The former is a role that pushes them (and the Committee) to examine and discuss various ways of working and movement building and identify how they can be made transformative, liberating and sustainable. The latter encouraged them to ask important questions about the ethics and importance of storytelling and history-mapping, as well as the significance of creating responsible, healthy and loving communities in the process of building social justice movements.
Back home, as if in response to these questions, we were able to curate multiple conversation and arts-based community events to facilitate collective reflection on building socially just infrastructure and spaces. Sharing joy, these spaces taught us, does more to keep a community bound than suffering.
We also hosted, attended and initiated several other dialogues and learning spaces this month, participating in and encouraging nuanced conversations about gender relations, sexual violence, economic violence, and social justice. The ongoing state violence in Bangladesh against students and protestors was also a key subject of discussion. You can find resources to learn and advocate for the issue here.
Our learnings through this month of whirlwind activity were simple and impactful:
Reflecting, conversing, and giving radically honest words (songs, poems, doodles and sculptures) to our histories and resistance brings us closer to imagining new realities and transforming those structures to build an alternative based in loving care.
We may be individuals, but we are also our communities. It’s a long road to justice, and holding our cultures, arts, foods, and selves close is the only way we can make it.
We are excited to continue putting these learnings into action and see where we go!
What’s New?
Our Founder, Vandita, has been onboarded as an Advisory Committee member for the Pleasure Project. Learn more about the Advisory Committee and their role.
Vandita also completed the International Visiting Leaders Program (IVPL) on Racial and Social Justice in June 2024. Learn more about the program and their experience with the program and the learnings they took back.
We held our 2024 Bangalore #PrideWithOFC event on 15 June. The objective of this event was to use art and conversation to collectively re-imagine public spaces in the city to be queer-friendly and inclusive.
From the 2024 Bangalore #PridewithOFC event We attended the Domestic Violence Stakeholder Summit, organised by Invisible Scars Foundation on 6th July, 2024. Attended by 75+ folks working in the social development sector, the dialogue was designed to identify solutions to make economic freedom accessible to survivors of sexual and gender based violence.
From the Domestic Violence Stakeholders Summit Vandita and Arshiya from the One Future Collective team met with some of our amazing community members in Delhi on July 11, 2024. It was an incredible evening filled with reflection, conversation and laughter!
From the Delhi community meet up We’ve started two new cohort-based courses with educational institutions in Mumbai. These are a course on Gender Sensitisation and Queer Rights in Thakur College and another on Social Justice and Economic Violence in Nanavati College.
On 16th July 2024, our Lead, People Power, Kuhoo Tiwari, facilitated a Dialogue on Freedom of Assembly and Association with UN Special Rapporteur Gina Romera as part of a Vuka! Meeting, representing One Future Collective. The dialogue was attended by 150 individuals.
From the Dialogue on Freedom of Assembly and Association. We held the following spaces under the One Future Festival in July.
Intentional and Just Leadership for Pratisandhi on July 13.
Intersectional Approaches to Mental Health: Queer Affirmative Lens and Anti-caste Lens for Unwind on July 21 and July 28, respectively.
Coming Soon!
Starting August 10, we will be running the next cycle of our PoSH Training of Trainers Program.
Under the One Future Festival, we will be facilitating six workshops in August 2024, with organisations like Pratisandhi, Kuviraa, Parenthesis, Nazaria Arts Collective, Department of Social Work at Delhi University and Aajeevika Bureau. These workshops will be based on a range of themes, such as navigating burnout, feminist leadership, social justice, inclusion and anti-caste allyship.
To host a similar workshop on themes of social justice, feminist leadership, etc. in your organisation or educational institution, reach out to us at info@onefuturecollective.org
We might just have a surprise makeover in store for our trusty www.onefuturecollective.org! Here’s a sneak peek behind-the-scenes.
BTS of our upcoming website makeover! Art x Social Justice
Here is a curated list of social justice-based art recommendations. Click here or on the image to learn more.
From the Toolbox
Introduction to Workplace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Through this course, we'll provide participants with an overview of understanding and practicing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within workplaces. This is a comprehensive course with a mix of lecture-style videos, self reflection prompts, an MCQ quiz and a case study worksheet to keep you engaged throughout.
We would recommend this course to all those who are interested in learning about and committed to making DEI a reality within their own workplaces.
Introduction to Alternative Justice
This course explores alternative justice [AJ] through real-life global and Indian examples, shedding light on community accountability and the practical implementation of alternative justice forms.
We would recommend this course to all those who are interested in learning about the discourses of transformative and alternative justice.
Get Involved
Volunteer your time to our Digital Community Centre, through the Labourdesk and the Peer Support Helpline.
Become a part of the Feminist Leadership Hub - a virtual, community-driven, peer learning platform centred around Feminist Leadership, developed in collaboration with FAIR SHARE of Women Leaders.
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