Grounding

Project Tallawah is led by and for Black/Global Majority women (BGM) who have been minoritised in the geopolitical North i.e. women who are defined in the UK policy context as Black and minority ethnic (BME) or who may also choose to define as Women of Colour (WOC).

We are deliberate in our centring of Black, African and African-Heritage  women, girls and gender expansive people as a foundational element of our practice. This guides all aspects of our work.

We are both located within and in relationship with many communities including Black/global majority feminist activists, creatives, dreamers, community folk who may not define their work as feminist / activist, and disrupters who are working within philanthropy.

Our communities are Black/Global Majority, Indigenous, Disabled, LGBTQ+ and more. We honour our interdependence and we name our positionality. Rather than offering a pretence of objectivity, we are clear that our existence and practice are our Black feminist technology; which centres the liberation of Black girls, women and gender non-conforming people. We are guided by our vision of living loving, joyful lives; where our communities experience freedom, healing, abundance and equity, and a planet where all life is sustained.

We believe that:

• The dominant economic models are corrupt and violent. We will not define them as ‘broken’ as they were never intended to free us, and they continue to be held in place by a limited but powerful number of humans for the benefit of a limited number of wealthy / financially rich people.

• Colonisation and capitalism are interwoven. The acquisition of wealth is by and large related to historic and contemporary patterns of exploitation including in the plantation economy, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the occupation of indigenous lands through settler colonialism. 

• Reforms and adaptations of capitalism have only served to hold systems of power in place.

• Scarcity has been manufactured to maintain the status quo.  There are enough resources on this planet to enable all of life to be nurtured and supported equitably, outside of the dominant paradigms which feed competition, exploitation  and extraction.

• Philanthropy, especially as it operates through foundations, corporate social responsibility, and individual giving  by high net worth individuals is not the solution to economic inequality. Indeed the philanthropic industry, arguably, has been part of the problem. However, transformative actions on the part of these actors, along with key shifts including tax reform, debt cancellation (national and individual) and reparative action at the level of states and individual wealth holders, are all part of moving us towards economic justice.