Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF)
Around the world, women and LGBTQIA+ people are organizing for their rights and liberation. Among the most important expressions of this organizing is Sempreviva Organização Feminista, a grassroots feminist organization in Brazil that forms part of the glue of the World March of Women.
In Brazil, like elsewhere, the struggles for women and gender nonconforming people intersect with struggles for democracy and against extractive economic models. As the far-right political movements grow apace with corporate thefts of land from Indigenous and other rural peoples, women and LGBTQIA+ people are among the major targets. Politicians join corporations in putting profit ahead of peoples’ needs, driving cuts to anti-poverty programs that allow many — especially working-class women and gender nonconforming people — to survive an increasingly unequal Brazil.
But Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), leveraging its decades of experience and global perspective, is providing a key voice in the movement for liberation and a different economy. They organize both as a separate organization and alongside others to strengthen grassroots feminist politics across Brazil’s Left and civil society.
SOF was founded in 1963 as part of the feminist movement in Brazil, but it has always made links internationally as well. It is home to the executive secretariat of the World March of Women (WMW) in Brazil — connecting and coordinating the work in Brazil with grassroots feminisms around the world.
SOF and WMW-Brazil’s work focuses on Social Movements, Transformation and Feminism. They support and advise feminist and mixed-gender organizations, social movements and governing bodies, providing training to strengthen both groups and women and LGBTQIA+ leaders, and building feminism in social movements.
Grassroots International’s support for SOF seeks to strengthen their presence on a local, national, and international levels — including through the Berta Cáceres International Feminist Organizing School.
