The reason that FiLiA came out of London was to reach more Women. One of the team moves with the conference each year to make this a little easier and for 2020 she is living with another member of the FiLiA team who happens to live in Portsmouth! Today we held our third FiLiA meet-and-greet. It’s a very informal invitation to local Women’s organisations and individuals where we share a little about the history of FiLiA, but more importantly - we get the chance to hear about the work going on in the local community. Each year local Women contribute to the shaping of the conference and take part as speakers, artists, stall holders and volunteers. It’s become an important part of the FiLiA story and has resulted in many new connections between Women that simply did not exist before.

Every year we find a community based venue to hold our meetings in, and in Portsmouth we have been using Lily and Lime which is a ‘social enterprise that enables and supports young people and adults to engage in a professional cleaning work skills programme in a real business setting’. Thanks to all the staff there for looking after us so well.

Today a couple of Women joined us who are active in their local community. Both will be volunteering with FiLiA (thank you!).

We also met with six Women from the Chat over Chai group which has been going for almost 5 years now. They host weekly meetings and work to support the ‘Black Asian Minority Ethnic Refugees (BAMER) community tackle loneliness and social isolation and access social groups and services.’ They invite speakers along and arrange outings too, as well as putting on performances and creating research projects.

The daughter of one of the group recently completed a project on the suffragettes and will be displaying her poster at FiLiA! We look forward to working with Chat over Chai and are excited to be in touch.

Building Sisterhood and Solidarity

By LM