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Meet the women solving the world’s biggest problems through the cultivation of female leadership, critical thought, and action.
An interview and documentary series spotlighting the women combatting patriarchal domination, colonialism and imperialism in all its forms: MVAWG and sexism, ableism and discrimination, systemic poverty and classism, racism, land theft and ecocide.
Our weekly series provides a vetted platform for our viewers to connect with women engaging in ground-breaking work around the world: community leaders and change-makers; some well-known, some you’ve never heard of before.
We don’t do donations. We pay reparations for an outstanding debt long overdue.
Our member-funded micro-grants, clinics, and incubators support women globally in business, justice and rights, education, and family and health needs. Our innaugral annual summit serves as a place for reconciliation, understanding, and community-building amongst women across all sectors.
Femmes Mondiales community-funded initiatives are not charitable acts, they are a form of reparations for harms caused, past and present, both in the so-called ‘Global South’ and in our own communities in the ‘west’. We can’t encourage and facilitate critical thinking without critical action. We can’t acknowledge the wrongs without doing our part to make it right.
Photo by Elissa, 2018. ‘Debt’ group exhibition, Khalil Sakikini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Artists: Mujahed Khallaf, Casey Asprooth Jackson
Community-Funded Initiatives
Empowerment
Assisting women achieve green economic independence via micro-grants and leadership, business, and finance training. We support women leaders focused on ensuring access to education for girls, poverty reduction, and mitigating climate change.
Health Care
Centering the needs of women’s physical and mental health including maternal healthcare and MVAWG trauma. The women and children we serve are often survivors of MVAWG: rape and sexual violence used as a weapon of war, crimes against humanity and genocide, ‘honour’ crimes, and domestic violence.
Justice
Justice for victims of MVAWG, both at the individual and state level, via legal investigations, documenting evidence that can be used for prosecution, and supporting enforcement of laws to protect women and girls. We assist women and girls in understanding their rights and support lobbying to enact laws to protect women and girls.
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About the host
Elissa is a Canadian creative media practitioner, international lawyer, and NGO founder with Asperger’s. She holds a Bachelor of Laws with an emphasis on IHRL and Public Law from the University of London, a Masters in American Law from Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount, and a Masters in Creative Media Practice from University of the West of Scotland. Through her NGO, she worked with displaced Acholi women and children victimised by the LRA-led Acholi genocide in Atiak, Uganda for several years. At home, she has created and directed dog therapy programs for marginalised children. At present, she works closely with Palestinian Animal League in the occupied Palestinian Territories.
Elissa, with more than 24 years in the film and television industry, has transitioned from acting to working behind the lens with her media company Elissa Tanit Studios. As filmmaker and producer, she believes collaborating with talent globally creates engaging, diverse, thought-provoking work with a unique point of view. After her own blunders in well-intentioned foreign aid, she is an advocate for dismantling racist, imperialistic systems, colonial narratives, and tired aid models, throughout the so-called ‘Global South’, specifically in African nations.
As an autistic woman, formally diagnosed at the age of 40, Elissa sees an urgent need for accurate representation of her community. An extension of her Masters Creative Project at UWS, her debut feature documentary, Very Late Diagnosis, is currently in production. The film is a reflexive exploration of the emerging phenomenon of very late diagnosis of autism in women.
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