A Voice For the Voiceless

The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.

The Impact of Service

"Speaking with locals and living in a country is the best way to learn about the real lives of citizens, not just the stories in the mainstream media. I will be more critical of what I read as a result of this experience. I also feel even more grateful for my education, and I feel a stronger responsibility to assist others who do not have resources or access to opportunities in their communities."

Maria Skouras (New York University) volunteered in 2011 as a Peace Fellow for eHomemakers in Malaysia.

For more 2011 feedback click here.

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Partner Campaigns > Advocacy Quilting

Advocacy Quilting

AP helps community-based advocates to make quilts for use in their advocacy. This model was inspired by the Bosfam weavers (“Weavers for Hope”), who have produced 15 quilts that carry the names of relatives murdered at Srebrenica. The Bosfam quilts have been used by Bosfam in its campaigns for justice and empowerment. Others have since followed the Bosnian example and made advocacy quilts: in Guatemala, in Uganda, in Nepal, in DRC (left), and in France. Where possible, AP connects partners to quilters and weavers in the US. Their work is profiled below and new pages will be added as new quilting projects develop. AP is now working with partners to generate an income for quilters. We welcome feedback and suggestions.

SPECIAL EVENT - UN exhibits AP quilts

Eleven advocacy quilts are currently on exhibit at the United Nations in New York. AP is partnering with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to organize the exhibition, 'Women are the Fabric.' To see posters of the quilts, and order greeting cards, click here.

THE QUILTS (2007 - 2012)

Click on the photos below to visit AP's quilting partners and learn about their work. To exhibit a quilt Contact us. We will be happy to help and can provide a speaker.

A weaver at BOSFAM works on the seventh Srebrenica Memorial Quilt in Bosnia. Women from ADIVIMA review their Rio Negro Memorial Quilt in Maya Achí, Guatemala. Members of the Gulu Disabled Persons Union pose with their Advocacy Quilt in Uganda. A young girl from BASE in Nepal sews a tile for the Love Blanket to protest child labor.


Survivors of sexual violence work on the Ahadi Quilts at SOSFED in the Congo	Survivors of uterine prolapse in Nepal paint their stories for the Women's Health quilt, under the WRRP.	Roma women assemble panels for the DOSTA! Quilt in Strasbourg, France.	Roma women and Peace Fellow Beth Wofford brainstorm for the Czech Roma Quilt


Roma women from Kosovo design their panels for the Gracanica Roma Quilt	Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian women in Kosovo work on the Prizren Roma Quilt	Women in Kampala, Uganda work with KIWOI to create the straw Butonde Quilt.	Q'eqchi Mayan women in Belize are making a quilt that depicts the animals and plants for the Belize Forest Quilt.

	Peace Fellow Charlotte Bourdillon with the Rehema group in Kenya discuss the Rehema Widows Quilt.	Girls from the Kakenya Centre of Excellence boarding school hold up their designs for the Maasai Girls Quilt.

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MILESTONES IN THE QUILTING CAMPAIGN

Spring of 2007- BOSFAM weavers start work on the first Srebrenica Memorial Quilt which will commemorate their relatives who were killed or disappeared in 1995.
July 11, 2007- To mark the 12th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, The Srebrenica Memorial Quilt travels to St Louis, MO, home to some 30,000 former residents of Srebrenica who are mostly refugees.
August 2008- Fifteen weavers from the resettlement village of Pacux, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz in Guatemala complete The Río Negro Memorial Quilt to commemorate 477 family members who died during a series of genocidal massacres perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army in and around the Maya Achí village of Río Negro between 1981 and 1982.
December 10, 2008- The Rio Negro Memorial Quilt is launched in the United States by AP in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
October 26, 2009- Radovan Karadzic goes on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. The Mothers of Srebrenica, a high-profile advocacy group, take one of the Srebrenica quilts to the Hague for the opening of the trial. The photo appears in the media all over the world, helping to draw attention to the needs of survivors.
June- July, 2010- 183 children in 9 different villages throughout Nepal create two Love Blankets to tell the stories of these children who were forced into slave labor at very young ages.
June- August 2010- Twenty-Five members of the Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU) in Uganda complete the GDPU Advocacy Art Quilt, telling the stories of GDPU's staff and members, many of whom became disabled during the twenty years of civil war, provoked by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
June- September, 2010- 120 survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo produced embroidered panels that wre turned into six diffreent quilts. They named their project Ahadi, which means "promise" in Swahili.
August 2010- Women from the Women's Reproductive Rights Program's (WRRP’s) Uterine Prolapse Survivor’s Network in Nepal use a traditional form of art called Mithila to paint tiles for a quilt that depicts their experiences with uterine prolapse.
February 2011- The first Ahadi quilt is exhibited at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
March 23, 2011- The second Ahadi quilt is exhibited at the 10th anniversary of Zivik, AP's Partner Organization, in Berlin.
April 2011- Eight women from the Roma community living in Strasbourg, France begin sewing the Roma Advocacy Quilt.
April 20, 2011- The six Ahadi quilts are shown for the first time together, at Georgetown University.
June, 2011- The Roma Advocacy Quilt is displayed in Venice at the Biennale. The Quilt is presented by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe
July 5-13, 2011- BOSFAM Weavers for Hope display the Srebrenica Memorial Quilts in a Tuzla-based gallery to commemorate the 16th Anniversary of the massacre.
October, 2011- The Three Love Blankets and the Tharu Liberation Quilts are displayed in Washington, DC during two events featuring BASE founder Dilli Chaudhary.
October 24-25 - AP exhibits the four Roma quilts (from France, Czech Republic and Kosovo) at the third International Conference of Roma Women in Grenada, Spain.
November 3, 2011 - The Srebrenica diaspora quilt headlines at Rugs of Remembrance, an exhibit of Bosnian diaspora weaving at the Institute for Community Research, Hartford Connecticut.
December 19, 2011 - AP exhibits the 3 Mahilako Swastha (women's health) quilts from Nepal, and the Butonde (Nature) quilt from Uganda in Washington.
March 8, 2012 - 11 advocacy quilts are shown at the United Nations, on the occasion of International Women's Day.

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A weaver at BOSFAM works on the seventh Srebrenica Memorial Quilt in Bosnia.	Women from ADIVIMA review their Rio Negro Memorial Quilt in Maya Achí, Guatemala.	Members of the Gulu Disabled Persons Union pose with their Advocacy Quilt in Uganda.	A young girl from BASE in Nepal sews a tile for the Love Blanket to protest child labor.