MOXIE Literacy Initiative
MOXIE aims to encourage, support, and foster collaborations between young African voices, and we believe that literacy plays a crucial role in achieving these aims. This is why we felt the need to get involved with encouraging reading and writing amongst young refugees and asylum seekers, especially those who identify as women, transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming individuals in Africa.
“The practice of reading and writing enables a culture to identify its past while envisioning its future.”
As an intersectional organisation, we understand that there is a gender gap in global literacy rates. As such, we want to be a part of raising awareness of the important role literacy plays in promoting gender equality. By working with established refugee organisations, we hope to foster a deeper and more nuanced understanding of literacy and identity amongst marginalised youth in refugee and asylum seeker communities. We also want to explore how these ideas can be utilised for social change.
Forced displacement is one of the world’s most challenging and pressing issues. Increasingly, nations have responded with an emphasis on the securitisation of migration and tightening of immigration policies over the rights and well-being of those who have been forced to flee their homes. When it comes to the international regime, ensuring legal protections for the forcibly displaced has become the priority, and whilst we acknowledge that this is imperative, we also recognize that there is an entire generation of young people whose personal narratives are being lost and only spoken about in terms of their displacement.
This is where MOXIE wants to be involved. Our aim is to encourage and support young creatives in the refugee and asylum-seeking community in South Africa to tap into their talents as a way of sharing their experiences and as a tool for nurturing and building more inclusive societies. We also want to use our platform to encourage the sharing of stories and ideas that reflect the diversity of the multiple lived experiences in our country.
Through MOXIE, we hope to encourage the adoption of reading and writing, whilst not asking communities to lose their cultural and oral traditions. Instead, we want to promote creative works that reflect the diversity of their lived experiences.