1986
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Forging its own structure to keep organising and mobilising within the global South, DAWN initially forms a seven-member steering committee and briefly houses its first secretariat at the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) in New Delhi, India. Over the next decades, DAWN’s leadership will rotate across the global South, reinforcing its commitment to decentralised feminist organising, rooted in regional contexts.
DAWN Secretariat moves to the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), Brazil, in 1986, with Neuma Aguiar on lead. In 1990, it moves to the Women and Development Unit (WAND) at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, with Peggy Antrobus as general coordinator.
In 1998, the DAWN Secretariat crosses the globe, moving to Fiji, at the University of the South Pacific, with Claire Slatter in the lead. In 2004, it moves to Cross River State, Nigeria and is based at the Girls’ Power Initiative (GPI), led by Bene Madunagu; then, in 2008, the Secretariat finds a new home at Miriam College, Quezon City, Philippines, with Gigi Francisco as coordinator until 2014. Then DAWN comes back to Fiji with an in-house secretariat team based in DAWN’s Suva office, a communications’ team working remotely from Brazil, with Gita Sen, María Graciela Cuervo, Kamala Chandrakirana and Kumundini Samuel as co-coordinators over the last decade.
