Support South Asian Women’s Collective

SAWC is growing, and we are working toward incorporating as a nonprofit. We are grateful to the project and organizational funders who support are work, but there is an opportunity for additional individuals and organizations to help us reach more South Asian women and gender-diverse individuals.

Ways to support SAWC:

  • Sponsor our events, annual conference or programming

  • Invite us to speak at your next event

  • Participate in our giving circle for the 2025 Didi Creative Fund

If you are interested in joining the giving circle and contributing to the Didi Creative Fund, or in any other giving opportunities listed above, please contact Herleen Arora at info@sawcollective.ca.

Didi Creative Fund

In 2022, community leaders from grassroots organizations—Didihood, Tamil Women Rising, and South Asian and Tamil Women’s Collective came together to create the Didi Creative Fund. Didi (pronounced dee-dee) means sister in many South Asian languages including Hindi and Panjabi. 

As leaders started to discuss ideas for collaboration, they each acknowledged a gap in creative funding opportunities to support South Asian women and gender-diverse individuals.

The desire for community leaders to create the Didi Creative Fund came out of two core goals: 

  1. Lack of funding programming and resources to support the South Asian community.

  2. Challenges and issues the arts and culture sector experienced during the pandemic, and continues to experience post-pandemic.    

In our pilot year, we pooled $1,500 and gave out three micro-grants of $500 each to support creatives and artists with buying materials, enrolling in a course, curating an event, and/or attending a retreat or program. 

In 2023, we gained more interest from community members who wanted to contribute to the giving circle and raised $4000, enabling 8 micro-grant awards.  The interest in our creative fund got us featured on Toronto’s City News.  We launched the fund again this year, and raised $2,500. To learn more about awarded fund recipients and their creative projects, check out the Didihood Instagram page.

We hope to launch our next round of funding in January 2025, and announce fund recipients in May 2025 during South Asian Heritage Month.