Books and reading have always been tools used by women and oppressed people to survive and achieve liberation. In Lebanon, however, many can only find feminist books in personal libraries or at elite universities.
In the belief that knowledge should not be an inaccessible resource or an exclusive individual treasure, the Knowledge Workshop (KW) seeks out and collects women's stories to create and share feminist resources within communities in Lebanon.
KW received its first grant from the MWF in 2017 to support its feminist library, which is open to the public. KW was able to enrich its library by purchasing nearly 200 new books in English and Arabic. Their shelves are mostly filled with fiction and non-fiction books written in Arabic by and/or about women, items often absent from feminist spaces dominated by English, as well as books on feminine issues from around the world (South Asian feminism, African-American feminism, Mexican feminism, environment, sexuality, etc.).
The growth of the library enabled KW to become an essential space for feminist researchers, students and readers interested in the history of women's rights by providing them access to books unavailable elsewhere.
The library hosts numerous conferences, documentary film screenings, and feminist meetings that are attracting every larger audiences. The library's activities also have diversified, and it has become a space to host meetings of young feminist groups who need a place to get together.
With its new place in the feminist community, KW now wants to reach girls and women outside the circles of those already convinced, and create bridges with other women's organizations to develop the women's movement in Lebanon.
2017 was a decisive year for the feminist library. Thanks to its grant (which was renewed in 2019), the MWF became the library's largest contributor, enabling it to acquire a very wide and diverse selection of books which are very popular among visitors. The number of visitors to the library increased significantly over the year and the association welcomed 30 new members, mostly young women and male feminists.
KW and its feminist library have become a key space in the young Lebanese feminist movement. By working for a more equitable redistribution of feminist knowledge, which is treated as a transformative collective wealth, this project has made it possible to show the importance of making this knowledge more accessible and of creating safe resource spaces. It also has demonstrated the need of more women's stories in our cultures. KW is continuing to develop in this direction, with projects such as "Storytellers", an oral history of women, in order to produce content, notably books, documentary films and audio archives, on feminism in Lebanon and, ultimately, in the MENA region.
