strategies
CREA focuses on advancing the rights of persons structurally excluded, believing that when structurally excluded people identify and understand their rights and take action to exercise and assert those rights, the human rights of all people are advanced.
structural exclusion
CREA uses the term “structurally excluded” to draw attention to the ways in which societal architecture prevents certain people from enjoying the full spectrum of rights and from meaningfully and effectively participating in their communities and decision-making spaces.
Our work focuses on preventing individual harms, dismantling the structures that construct and sustain those harms, and creating pathways to justice for persons excluded because of their real or perceived genders, sexualities, identities, or chosen forms of labor.
At present, CREA works with structurally excluded women and girls, persons of diverse sexualities, genders and sex characteristics, persons with disabilities, and sex workers. CREA will continue to practice and advocate for broader inclusion and solidarity.
CREA’s Strategic Plan 2021-25 is designed around CREA’s politics and values, reinforcing core commitments that ground its work in a way that responds to the current moment. The Strategic Plan in designed to advance the human rights of structurally excluded women, girls and gender non-conforming people and works towards CREA’s mission and vision of a just and peaceful world.
strategic objectives
CREA ensures feminist leadership and movements are strong, intersectional, inclusive, and amplify the voices of structurally excluded people.
Outcome 1.1:
Partner organizations are capacitated to become more intersectional, accessible, effective and inclusive of structurally excluded people.
Outcome 1.2:
A cadre of leaders – particularly among structurally excluded people – is capacitated to advance feminist models of leadership, participation and critical thinking.
Outcome 1.3:
South-South and global movements increasingly express solidarity with and reflect the perspectives of structurally excluded people.
CREA develops knowledge resources on sexuality, reproductive and sexual
gender and human rights that reflect the experiences and perspectives of global South feminists.
Outcome 2.1:
SRHR movement actors increasingly embrace a rights-based and affirmative approach.
Outcome 2.2:
Individuals are capacitated to exercise and assert their sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms.
Outcome 2.3:
Policy actors defend and advance sexual and reproductive rights and health.
Outcome 2.4:
Families, community members and other stakeholders increasingly support the sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms of all people.
CREA links local and global advocacy and challenges policies, laws and practices that undermine the rights of people whose realities are invisible or silenced.
Outcome 3.1:
Structurally excluded people identify and understand gender-based violence (GBV) and take action to address it in their lives and communities.
Outcome 3.2:
Advocacy, public education and capacity-building efforts effectively challenge punitive or protectionist laws, policies and practices that can exacerbate GBV or otherwise cause harm.
Outcome 3.3:
GBV movement actors increasingly embrace a rights-based and affirmative approach.
CREA influences and shapes discourse in the public domain through art and media to change the way people think and act on issues of gender, sexuality and rights.
Outcome 4.1:
Structurally excluded people and their movements contribute to the defence and expansion of civic space.
Outcome 4.2:
Partner organizations and movements develop new discourses and strategies to resist and challenge anti-feminist and anti-rights mobilizations.
Outcome 4.3:
Advocacy, public education and capacity-building efforts expand dialogues across contentious or neglected feminist issues, to build more effective movements.
Outcome 4.4:
Feminist organizations increasingly adopt critical approaches to technology and defend digital rights, thereby enhancing the safety, security and well-being of movements and structurally excluded people in online spaces.
CREA manifests its values to be an intersectional, inclusive, accessible, diverse, innovative, collaborative and multigenerational feminist organization that strives to operate at high levels of excellence, effectiveness and accountability.
Outcome 5.1:
CREA’s organizational culture and structures reflect its values and enable it to advance its mission.
Outcome 5.2:
CREA’s organizational processes and systems enhance clarity, transparency, learning, accountability, efficiency and agility.
Outcome 5.3:
CREA secures and manages the resources needed to implement its strategic plan and maximize strategic growth, innovation, responsiveness and sustainability.
strategies
CREA works towards its mission via the six C’s:
capacitate:
CREA strives to equip our partners and constituencies of structurally excluded people with the knowledge, understanding, resources and skills to demand their rights, engage in advocacy, and strengthen individual and collective resilience. We convene cohorts of individuals and organizations who have the capacity to bring a sexuality, gender and rights perspective to their work. And we strengthen movements by fostering an intersectional approach focused on building collective efforts to defend civic space and influence decision-makers.
communicate:
CREA believes in and utilizes processes that move from critical thinking to critical practice. We craft messages to shift discourses, build knowledge, introduce new concepts and language, challenge prevailing social norms, and strengthen movement-building approaches. We communicate directly and also amplify the advocacy messages of partners, especially structurally excluded groups, in order to expand our reach and influence key decision-makers.
complicate:
CREA practices politics of deep inclusion. We identify matters that have been neglected or that provoke tension, and challenge ourselves and our partners to engage in difficult but meaningful discussions. We create opportunities for our partners to rethink, reimagine and reboot feminist politics and strategies in ways that fully embrace diversity and inspire action.
connect:
CREA connects communities and organizations with each other and links advocates and activists across local, regional, and global levels. We aim to shift power by connecting those who are often structurally excluded to decision-making processes and opportunities to advocate for their rights. We support our partners and constituencies to develop new relationships, to collaborate, to build solidarity, and to work together to defend and expand civic space — online, in the public sphere, and in policy-making processes.
create:
CREA develops knowledge resources that link cutting-edge theory with the experiences and perspectives of our partners and constituents. These resources create new frameworks, tools and language that challenge restrictive social norms, provoke new thinking, build scholarship and mobilize cross-movement action. We use varied forms of expression – art, music, performance – and make resources on sexuality, gender, human rights and movement building accessible to grassroots activists and communities through translation and adaptation to diverse contexts.
convene:
CREA collaborates with multiple social movements on cross-cutting issues of gender, sexuality and rights. We bring together diverse movements and organizations to build common understanding, allyship and a commitment to shared action. Working from an intersectional perspective allows CREA to bridge fault lines between social movements, foster courageous conversations, and build cross-movement linkages.
our values
Critical feminist practice: CREA aims to practice inclusive and intersectional feminism — centering gender, sexuality, accessibility and rights and amplifying the voices and visibility of those structurally excluded.
Diversity & cross-movement collaboration: CREA promotes cross-movement knowledge, solidarity, and collaboration.
Multigenerational approaches: CREA practices multigenerational mentorship and learning within the framework of movement-building.
Innovation and creativity: CREA strives to ignite ideas, knowledge, and alliances — translating creative and critical thinking into action.
Sharing and shifting power: CREA works through partnerships — redistributing resources, knowledge and power, and opening spaces and expanding possibilities for activists to build collective power.