PIE Update

March is easily the busiest month for our World Pulse Amazons. It was no different for our PIE members - between balancing several commitments that include CSW, the launch of World Pulse's Digital Empowerment Training Suite, and events for and after IWD, we had a packed house to discuss a bunch of important things in our last PIE Meeting.

Rangineh, our amazing facilitator, started us off with a beautiful poem, ‘A Pause in the Flurry’ by Anya Hankin. Rendered in Rangineh's voice, the already moving poem took on a whole different colour as she invited each of us to step into the space and breathe deeply, to own the words and all that it said and didn't say for us in the moment, and to step into our conversation from that point. For me, personally, it was such a beautiful reminder of who I was in the moment, and that helped me stay grounded for a good, long, while.

We then moved on to a broad overview of our meeting, and we had a good number of things to discuss. Dawn, Tam, Ana, and I got to present our observations following a conversations with a training organization, with the members of PIE, toward potentially engaging with them at PIE. We also talked through some of our own views on engaging with the organization and possibly looking at ways to engage with organizations centered and focusing on, and led from the majority world. If you're reading this and have suggestions to send our way for an organization that can support us by offering trainings on shifting the power, checking our privilege and positionality, and navigating our identities in these spaces, please feel free to reach out.

From there, we moved on to a rather important share from Tam about an emerging form of violence against women and her concerns for how women's safety needs to be prioritized and protected. Tam shared a few datapoints and information as well as her own lived experience, and invited the members of PIE to consider a way forward around engaging with a series of conversations. All of us spent some time receiving and holding Tam's share, and decided to spend some time thinking through all the information we received before offering up a response.

Following a short break, we returned to talk about our vision for expanding PIE through recruitments. Acknowledging that Karen and Jill stepped back from PIE in 2020, and that Sherna Benjamin would like to take some time off from PIE, we also realized that we must develop a strategy to sustain PIE beyond our individual selves. Following a deep acknowledgment of the nebulous ways of these times and our own positionalities on PIE, we decided to use the time this month until we meet again, to think about strategies for recruitment and also share feminist recruitment approaches and strategies. We hope to pick up the thread on this conversation in our next meeting, so that we can work toward expanding PIE at the soonest.