Her stories
Women's stories as knowledge, memory and a force for change, from Egypt to Canada.
Reclaiming Our Voices
Egyptian Women in Art, Research, and Activism
Storytelling as a civic act. Through seven community-led projects across Egypt, women turn lived experience into shared knowledge, and shared knowledge into change in their communities, in public conversation, and in policy.
Why storytelling
Where space for women's public expression is shrinking, storytelling keeps it open. In safe, facilitated sessions, women share experiences that are rarely heard and connect them to the wider forces that shape everyday life.
Participants take part not as beneficiaries but as producers of knowledge in their own right. And by working in Upper Egypt, the Delta, Marsa Matrouh and Siwa as well as Cairo, the projects bring in voices that are usually left out of national conversations.
How it works
- Storytelling and dialogueVirtual and in-person sessions where women share their stories and explore the challenges they face, with input from experts.
- Capacity buildingTraining in project design, monitoring and evaluation, and gender-aware proposal writing, with mentoring and peer learning.
- Seed grantsSmall grants help participants launch storytelling projects in their own communities.
The projects
Bara El Del (Outside the Shadow)
Safe spaces for women and girls in Upper Egypt to tell their own stories. 20 participants shared more than 80 stories on stigma, mental health and family life.
Story collection forthcoming
Climutopia: Women and Climate Change Network
Women working in climate and environment combine storytelling with training in leadership, communication and climate literacy.
Ongoing network
Mama Stepped Over the Threshold
Mothers turn silenced experiences of childbirth, caregiving and stigma into collective stories. 16 participants, 15 stories, and a public performance.
Completed
Harvest Storytelling Workshop
Women farmers aged 33 to 75 document their unseen work in farming and harvest, in 12 stories. A short film is in production.
Film in production
The Frame Project
Storytelling on digital gender-based violence, including the experiences of women with disabilities, leading to 20 documented stories and a short film script.
In progress
Hajawa Khadra
Climate storytelling with women in Marsa Matrouh, now extending to Siwa through a five-day creative camp that brings Amazigh women's oral stories into the climate conversation.
In progress
Ecofeminist Storytelling for Climate Justice (Nawah Network)
Women farmers, fishers and market vendors share their working lives. Their stories fed into a policy paper on the new labour law.
Policy paper producedRead the stories
From Hajawa Khadra, a storytelling project on climate change with women in Marsa Matrouh. Shared with the storytellers' consent.
All our lives in Matrouh, we called rain the rain of goodness. But I don't know what happened this time. The house is water. The streets are water. Everything is water.
أنا قولت إن إحنا عاوزين دا يحصل، هو حصل بعدها بسبع تمن سنين، بس حصل. الحلول هي بتحصل، وكل تغيير بيتطلب وقت وجهد.
أنا صحراء منطقة الخروبة بمرسى مطروح التي طالما اعتقد البعض أنني جرداء قاحلة.. هل أنا مجرد سطح جامد؟
هل يُعقل أن يكبر حمد ليجد التغيرات المناخية قد قضت على الثقافة البدوية، فيقرأ عنها فقط؟
Storytelling is a personal archive for the city.
Stories from Canada
Fearless Cities, Unheard Voices and Noon Story: WJF's storytelling with diaspora women across Canada.
Unheard Voices
What Muslim women say about the impact of systemic racism on their mental health.
Stories from Toronto, Ottawa, Waterloo, and Montreal. Four Canadian Muslim women share their experiences about how Islamophobia creates a social stigma; that increases distress and feeling that they are outsiders.
About Us
Noon Story
Women for Justice Foundation’s communications and outreach team, the researchers at Al-Qazzaz Foundation for Education & Development (QED) alongside with HMC Connection team are pleased to announce that we are in the final phase of preparation to conduct the research, which includes the creation of forms, questionnaires, organizaing interviews, and focus groups, alongside creating the platform in which the project will be presented on.