Welcome to this month’s Stories of Hope! Read on (and listen!) for this month’s selections, including some truly life-changing progress from around the world. Let these stories remind you: There’s reason to hope for a better, more just world for us all. By supporting AJWS, you’re a part of this global movement for change.
This image: the pure joy of a couple on June 18 sitting inside Thai parliament, as Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. The vote was decades in the making. AJWS has been supporting LGBTQI+ rights activists in this fight since 2010 — and two of them, Hua Boonyapisomparn and Atitaya “Nook” Asa, were instrumental in shaping a draft of the bill that is now set to become law. We spoke with them about queer joy, same-sex marriage and what comes next in the fight for their community’s full human rights. Read our powerful conversation here.
More Stories of Hope
- In rural Uganda, our partner GWED-G is training men to become allies in the struggle for women’s rights. Meet men fighting the patriarchy from the inside out.
- In a new series by American Jewish leaders in The Forward, AJWS’s President and CEO Robert Bank ponders how to focus on the needs of communities in the Global South when our own community is suffering. His answer may inspire you.
Our last story of hope is one you can help set into motion. Earlier this month, we sent out a petition to the AJWS community urging Congress to pass the Global HER Act. This legislation would permanently repeal the global gag rule, the draconian policy that limits overseas funding for women’s health organizations. More than 1,800 of you have already signed on. If you haven’t yet, it’s not too late! Click here, learn more and let your voice be heard.
See you next month.
Onward,
Your friends at AJWS — and the activists whose work you support!
(like the incredible changemakers of Nairobi’s Positive Young Women Voices, who’ve grown a community of women determined to overcome poverty and violence)