What is an Annual Report, and what does it mean to shed these self-imposed corporate shackles?
A bit dramatic, but in our quest to make an “annual report” for 2022 and 2023 that is not just a recital of everything we did in the two years, this might be the fundamental question we have stumbled upon. An “annual report”, if we’re to go by a dictionary definition, is “a company’s yearly report to shareholders, documenting its activities and finances in the previous financial year”. It is in 2017, almost seven years into RESURJ being in the world, that we started putting together annual reports, and another seven years later we’re now asking ourselves more questions; for whom are these reports, for what purpose, and how can our feminist politics and ethics of care help us be more imaginative in how we frame, create and share them? While being transparent with our financials is a practice we’ll continue to follow, this felt like a moment to reflect on who we’re communicating to through the narrative, how to firmly embed the narrative in the social-political-economic realities we’re grappling with daily, and make it a collective learning and solidarity practice. So maybe it is time for us to break up with the idea of an annual report and, in its place, have something more true to Resurj emerge.
In one way, what you are about to read is the annual report that summarizes RESURJ’s activities across 2022 and 2023. But in another, more meaningful way, what you are about to read is our attempt to experiment with what an annual report is and reimagine who we are writing it for. This document, short and sweet, is meant to gently walk you through our universe and give you a glimpse of the politics, processes, and practices that have shaped and changed our collective over the past two years.
Through this report, we want readers (and that includes donors, allies, friends, and a broader audience of young feminists who still do not fully know us) to get a better understanding of what RESURJ is, what it isn’t, and where we want to go from here. We discuss our happy and proud moments, our struggles, our aspirations, and our doubts. And in thinking and writing about all of what you are about to read, we have been eager to share a part of ourselves with other Global South feminists and, in a way, invite them to think and be in a conversation with us about what it takes to build and sustain a feminist collective in today’s perplexing world.
We wish you a fruitful, enjoyable read.
Warmly,
RESURJitas