institutional
We are an all-women organization, run horizontally as a collective based on feminist principles. We have structured our work by assigning functions to each of its 16 members within 5 teams: a) management, b) research and projects in partnership, c) publications, d) events and courses, and e) fundraising. All our institutional decisions are taken jointly in monthly meetings. We still haven’t secured any funding and we rely on part-time voluntary work of all imuê’s members.
We work with community-based women who are leaders of their communities and with other women-led organizations. Our decision making process on research and policy agenda relies on a permanent dialogue with our partners, with whom we are constantly in touch via whatsapp, online meetings and email exchange. For instance, the visual identity and proofreading of our publications are decided together with authors, many of whom are grassroots women and LGBTQI activists. Some of the articles we publish are in co-authorship, which also implies reading and writing together via online meetings.
At imuê we seek to ensure that our decision-making processes always embody the perspective of those with whom we have established long-term bonds through ethnographic research – women from the national movement of street children in Pernambuco; women who maintain their African-Brazilian religious heritage in Bahia and São Paulo; indigenous leaders of the Juruna, the Xikrin, the Xoko-Kuará peoples; rural women involved in the landless movement in Maranhão, Tocantins and Minas Gerais – women who have taught us that the world is inhabited by a multitude of beings and who understand the dangers of recklessness towards the Earth. Inspired by feminist principles, we hope to form alliances not in spite of our differences but based on them, so that we may together seek economic and environmental justice, and ethnic, racial and gender equality.