Project Resist is a new and exciting independent strategic advocacy and policy organisation that specifically focuses on the needs of black and minority women. It draws on four decades of the frontline experience of its two key founding members: Pragna Patel and Rosie Lewis. They have previously led trail blazing specialist organisations and conducted pioneering and award-winning cases, policy work and campaigns in support of women’s rights to justice and self-determination in the face of gender-based violence and related issues of racism and social, economic and political discrimination and inequality.
Project Resist will be proactive in using opportunities and spaces for partnership and solidarity work with women and families facing injustice across social and racial divides. Without losing sight of the specificities of our experiences as women, our aim is to find ways of forging connections and supporting each other in recognition of the urgent need to develop shared political values and to move away from the divisive and destructive aspects of identity politics.
Continue the Journey
This work at the grassroots enables us to come together in SOLIDARITY and build RESISTANCE.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Transnational Marriage Abandonment
Transnational Marriage Abandonment (TMA) refers to the plight of migrant women who are taken abroad and left without resources by their British national partners, who they depend on entirely for their social and financial survival. Read more here.
Resisting Fundamentalism
Project Resist co-directors have a long history of challenging religious fundamentalism and religious coercion in the UK as it impacts on women’s fundamental human rights and freedoms and the struggle for social, economic and racial justice. Read more here.
Mapping Our Resistance : The FiLiA Legacy Project
Project Resist is proud to be working in partnership with the FiLiA Legacy Project. We have recently mapped the work of small grassroots black and minority women’s organisations in a number of FiLiA cities across the UK. This includes learning more about the needs and the challenges they face as well as the campaigns and policy they undertake. As part of this work, Project Resist has produced a detailed report that gives an insight into the many challenges and concerns that black and minoritised women and girls face at local and regional levels.
This work fits our own approach to policy making, which centres on: a) the lived experiences of women and girls still excluded from mainstream political discourse and law and policy making and b) rights-based activism. In this respect, our work with FiLiA is both timely and critically important. You can read more about this project here.
Recognising coercive control in counter-allegations: VAWG organisations call for reform in UKVI assessments
Project Resist and Rights of Women brought together VAWG organisations to examine how UKVI’s handling of counter-allegations is negatively impacting migrant women victim-survivors of domestic abuse applying for settlement. A briefing was produced outlining concerns and recommendations for change. Read more here.
Strengthening Grassroots Advocacy & Reclaiming Our Political Voice
Project Resist is working with the Resist Network and other regional grassroots feminist organisations to develop strategic policy and campaigning work. As part of this we will be delivering training that focuses on developing the provision of high-quality advocacy and casework using a rights-based perspective. Within the sector, there is growing unease about how advocacy work is increasingly being unearthed from the feminist grassroots politics and practice that once informed it and has instead been co-opted into a neoliberal agenda. Our aim is to re-frame this work from a feminist, anti-racist and anti-fundamentalist standpoint, while maintaining excellence and the highest professional standards.
Alongside our strategic advocacy and campaigning work, Project Resist and the Resist Network are developing a collective political voice and position on a range of issues. In partnership, we have made a number of policy submissions reflecting a broad range of concerns and issues that highlight the intersectional nature of the discrimination faced by BME women and girls and the nature of the multidirectional struggle that this entails. Read more here.