Challenging the issues faced by Women and Girls – Arts for Social Change Projects
The ambition to reach gender equity and eliminate disadvantage is at the heart of our Women and Girls work recognising that the key issues for Sri Lanka are a very high rate of domestic violence, sexual harassment, social media exploitation, suicide rates, over-protection of girls, and under-employment despite good educational achievements. Whilst addressing some of these issues directly, in the longer term our interventions are aimed at attitudinal change, tackling gender norms and attitudes among women and girls, as well as men and boys, and thus enabling the former to participate fully in society.
Our current and future programmes focus on reducing violence, creating role models, and tackling social media harassment through community-based interventions, as well as raising awareness, increasing aspirations for career opportunities and stimulating attitude change through providing a voice, a choice and agency for female empowerment and change.
Female Filmmakers First Grants
We have provided a grant to Anomaa Rajakaruna of Agenda 14 (Private) Limited who will build the capacity of 5 aspirant and emerging female filmmakers in Sri Lanka. The project hopes to identify, and nurture filmmakers interested in entering the film industry. We hope it will also support the creation of safe spaces for thought-provoking content, to promote dialogue and understanding, and connect with each other through creativity within communities.
61 applications from all 3 languages across the country were received: Ampara, Batticaloa, Colombo, Galle, Gampaha, Hambantota, Jaffna, Kalutara, Kandy, Kegalle, Kurunegala, Nuwara Eliya, Puttalam, Trincomalee and Vavuniya. The selection process is underway.
The 5 films will be launched in Colombo during the 2nd Colombo International Women's Film Festival, in March 2020.