Congratulations to the Summer 2020
SWS Social Actions Initiative Award Winners
Tannuja Rozario and Pedrom Nasiri
In 2016, SWS Council approved the Social Action Committee’s (SAC) proposal to support more direct social action of SWS members. The Social Actions Initiative Awards provide a way for the SAC to directly support and encourage the social activism of SWS members. Awards are given out twice per year on a competitive basis until funds run out. The social actions represented by this initiative are central to advancing the mission of SWS. Both of the award winners this funding cycle will each receive $500 to support their social activism projects. Special thanks go to the Social Actions Initiative Award Subcommittee: Ruth Marleen Hernández (Chair), Penny Harvey, Rosalind Kicher, and Sam Harvey.
Photo of Tannuja Rozario
Tannuja Rozario is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and earned her Advanced Certificate in Feminist Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently, she is working on her dissertation about reproductive health experiences of Indo-Caribbean women. Her project is funded by the National Science Foundation. Tannuja’s passion for advocacy and research stems from her background as an Indo-Caribbean immigrant. At a young age, she witnessed gender-based violence and reproductive injustice in Guyana, causing her to realize that gender inequality Indo-Caribbean women experience. As an activist, she became an Executive Board Member of South Queens Women’s March—a gender justice organization in South Queens, New York that fosters empowerment and provides resources for women and gender non-conforming folks. Based on her research with community members, she realized that conversations on maintaining healthy relationships and sexual empowerment are integral to reproductive justice.
Tannuja’s project, “Healthy Relationship Series for Indo-Caribbean Women and Gender Non-Conforming Folks in South Queens, New York,” is the first-ever healthy relationship series Indo-Caribbean community in Richmond Hill, NY. The healthy relationship series will include workshops on healthy relationships, consent, sex positivity, and healing. These workshops will invite community activists, students, professors, healing justice coaches, and healthy relationship coaches to come together to help an under-resourced community that continues to witness the deaths of many community members to gender-based violence.
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Photo of Pedrom Nasiri
Pedrom Nasiri is a Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Calgary, under the supervision of Dr. Pallavi Banerjee. Their doctoral research employs critical phenomenology and intersectionality to examine how the increasing prevalence of polyqueer families articulate with ongoing racial, gender, and class formation projects. Pedrom completed their M.A. at the University of Toronto in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, where they explored the experiences of Queer Muslim refugees in the Canadian asylum apparatus.
Much of Pedrom’s work is guided by critical social theories that emphasize the need to employ academic theory and inquiry to address everyday social injustices. Pedrom has worked with various governmental and non-governmental agencies across Canada to address long-standing inequities in healthcare and social service systems. Pedrom has been recognized for this work by The Order of St. John, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, and the Governor-General of Canada.
Funds will facilitate focus groups and interviews across the Fall of 2020 with polyamorous women inhabiting a diversity of identities. The data gathered from focus groups and interviews will be used to implement a five-day series of workshops, as well as printed materials, on the subject of violence, financial literacy, and trauma in polyfamilies. The project is in line with SWS’s Mission to engage in social justice projects to advance the well-being of women in society.
Pedrom would like to extend their sincerest thanks to the SWS Awards Committee, the SWS Social Actions Initiative Award Subcommittee, Pallavi Banerjee, Julie-ann and Mansour, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
SWS will be honoring Tannuja and Pedrom via a Virtual Awards Presentation. Pre-registration is required. Please click here to register for the Social Actions Initiative Awards Announcement taking place on July 24, 2020, at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. If you are interested in making a gift to support the Social Actions Initiative Awards, please contact Barret Katuna, Executive Officer, at swseo.barretkatuna@outlook.com. You can also make a gift online, by clicking here.