Dear reader,
Welcome to yet another year of FII! FIII turns 8 today and it wouldn’t have been possible without your support.
Feminism in India started out as a Facebook page, in 2013, that curated feminist content from the Internet. I began the Facebook page when I began my own journey as a feminist. Today, we are a media organisation of 13 kickass women who run our two websites — FII English and FII Hindi. On our 8th birthday, I’d like to take a moment to firstly thank my team who have always supported me and given their best to the organisation.
FII was created with the vision of dismantling patriarchy and social injustice by centering the voices of those that these structures oppress. Our mission is to increase the representation of Indian women and marginalised communities on the internet and amplify their concerns using tools of digital storytelling. Through our platform, we aim to create a generation of young people that are aware and educated about feminism and social justice.
A few updates
Over the past year, we expanded our multimedia content, especially our podcast vertical. We launched the second season of our flagship podcast ‘Intersectional Feminism—Desi Style!‘, wherein our hosts Nishtha Shanti and Sukanya Shaji discuss everything about feminism and pop culture. We’re also super proud to have partnered with the International Centre for Research on Women for our second podcast Women and Work: Why It Matters!
We now also have an Advisory Council – an expert panel of six members from various fields like law, journalism, academics, business, mental health, and gender.
During the pandemic, we also focussed on employee mental health and well-being and announced a year-end break for everyone where the organisation will shut operations down for a week.
Impact Stories
While I think every read, like, comment, share, subscription and listen counts, I am very happy to share some particularly special impact stories from the past year.
- Abhinaya Sridhar won the Orange Flower Award for her article on ‘How Family Vlogging Invisibilizes Children’s Consent‘ in the Writing on Parenting category.
- Gayatri Yadav won the Orange Flower Award in the runner-up position for her article on pink tax on women’s products in Hindi.
- Sudipta Das won second place in the SCARF Media for Mental Health awards for ”Nobody Affirmed My Queerness”: Experience Of Childhood Counselling Sessions which was published in FII.
These are just some of the award-winning stories of this year and there are many more to come. However, for me, the best part about FII and what keeps me going has always been how FII has impacted its readers. I receive so many messages from young people saying how FII broadened their definition of feminism or introduced them to intersectionality. So many students as well as some professors use FII articles in their academic research.
What’s coming?
I’m very excited to announce that we are shortly launching a new website. You will soon see a fresh new look, which is much cleaner and neater!
And, we are launching our third podcast with the Swedish Institute and the third season of our flagship podcast Intersectional Feminism—Desi Style! in the coming months. Watch this space for more!
Lastly, FII is independent of any religious, political, or corporate affiliations and requires funds to keep the websites running ad-free and pay for our core costs like salaries of our core team members, remuneration for our writers, and technology costs of running two websites, etc. We also want to be able to create more feminist resources that are time-intensive.
A few hundred rupees or a few thousand would go a long way in helping us stay ad-free, and we promise to keep serving you fresh feminist content that you love! On our eighth birthday, your contributions would make for the best birthday gift. Share your support by becoming an FII member and tweeting with #FIITurns8.
Or you could also make us a one-time donation. For international donors, please click here. For Indian donors, please click here.
Independent and honest feminist media needs committed readers and I duly hope that you will consider supporting your favourite feminist media platform.
I’d love to hear your stories and experiences of how FII impacted you! We hope you will continue to support us as you have through this tough year, so we can all be a step closer to smashing the patriarchy.
Till then,
Japleen
