|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Empower Women Media is a non-profit NGO launched in 2015 to foster female engagement in peacebuilding and the promotion of religious freedom, freedom of expression, and gender equality worldwide.
Next Monday, March 25th, EWM will host the Abrahamic Panels at United Nations Plaza in New York City. The event — where the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) will be represented by Director of North American Affairs Rebecca Rose and Public Affairs Officer and October 7th attack survivor Natalie Sanandaji – will feature short films, expert presentations, discussion groups, and networking opportunities.
EWM Executive Director Shirin Taber recently spoke with CAM about her organization’s work, including its extensive interfaith efforts that are core to its mission.
“If you want to raise the station of women, we all have to work together,” Taber, who is of Iranian-American heritage, said. “And since October 7th, we’ve had so many Jewish women come to us and say that they really see the need to collaborate and build multi-faith alliances. We can’t just be talking to each other, we need to be talking to people outside, and we’re kind of a conduit to do that, through our film festivals and other activities.”
“We believe that multi-faith collaboration saves lives, and at the end of the day it does because if I, with a Muslim-Christian heritage, can collaborate with you, as a Jewish man, we’re all better, we’re all safer, because we’re getting each other and we’re all standing together,” she added. “At the end of the day, we’re all people of faith, but we don’t feel like our theology has to be a barrier. We actually have more in common than we realize.”
What are EMW’s main activities?
“We want to shine a light on women, their voices, and their approaches. We’re focused on four things. We have a media fellowship where we train women to produce their own content. We’re definitely in the human rights space, so the content is on gender equality, religious freedom, freedom of expression, and so forth.”
“We have a film festival that is a product of that fellowship, where we showcase women’s films, short documentaries. We’ve been doing that for seven years. We’re the only religious freedom film festival in the world where women tell their own stories about why women should have freedom of religion and belief. We want to educate the world about this, because if you don’t know about religious freedom, you could lose it in one generation.”
“We have online courses that we started doing during Covid. We took all of the in-person training we had previously done and put it online, and we grew 10x. Rather than training 300 women a year, we were able to train 3,000 by directing them to an e-course and learning things there through short films and reflection questions, and getting a certificate of completion.”
“And finally, we host leadership events. That’s why we’re going to be convening the Abrahamic Panels in New York. We did a similar event in Washington, D.C., and we’re planning to go to Abu Dhabi in the fall.”
Can you speak more about EMW’s partnerships with Jewish women?
“I’m so humbled and fascinated by it. Honestly, I’ve always wanted to work with Jews. After October 7th, it was almost like the veil fell. All of a sudden, there has been an infusion of Jewish women in Empower Women Media, speaking on panels, and we’re producing a short documentary now about a Jewish mother and a Palestinian mother, about what they have in common as mothers. We’re looking at an Israeli-Palestinian media fellowship, and a film competition. A whole new sector is opening up to us and we’re delighted, because we love people, we love great stories, and we want to inspire. We want to help people foster and use their imaginations to envision a different future.”
How do you avoid the complicated politics of this realm?
“People know I’m kind of an idealist. I’m a mother, I love to bring people together. Anybody who knows me knows I tend to avoid politics. But I’ll be very frank — when October 7th happened, and I understood that Iran was funding Hamas, I was enraged to think that Iranians were behind all of this. So when it is political, I am pretty firm that I am pro-Israel, I will stand by Jews, I know who the funders of terrorism are, and as an Iranian woman I’ve suffered. I can’t go back to my homeland. I can’t take my children there.”
“I was a young child in 1979, and I remember the shame that we felt because Iran had taken American hostages. And when October 7th happened, it just brought back all those feelings. Whatever your politics are, however you feel about Netanyahu or how the war is being played out, it doesn’t matter, because we have to stand by the Jews and we can’t repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot allow antisemitism, and I’m horrified by these young people who are out on the streets. Who are they? Do they not know the history? Do they not know about the Holocaust? And I don’t think they do.”
What are the greatest obstacles EMW faces?
“As a women’s organization, the biggest challenge we face is access and funding. I think because we are women, sometime men are like, ‘Well, we don’t really do that,’ or ‘No thanks, we don’t really want to come to your event.’ There is still a lot of bias, taboos, and discrimination against women-led initiatives, and yet the research shows that the best peacebuilders are women.”
Where do you see EMW in five years?
“We’d like to be the number one multi-faith women’s network in the world. advancing the Abraham Accords, or wherever that place is that people focus on tolerance, inclusivity, religious freedom, and human rights. Wherever that banner is, we want to be the number one women’s network, using digital strategies, having amazing branding, and being the ‘place to be.’ And we’d love for CAM and others to help us get there.”
To learn more about Empower Women Media, please visit empowerwomen.media and follow it on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
