CHOOSING TO HUMANIZE, TOGETHER

A message from Footage's Executive Director & Co-Founder, Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton

As 2025 draws to a close, I return to a simple truth: we are still standing.

This year tested us – financially, politically, emotionally – in ways that brought Footage, and so many feminist organizations, painfully close to the edge. Many of you walked with us through that reality. I shared much of this in our Giving Tuesday letter just weeks ago, when I described how precarious this year had become – describing how a world where one in three organizations working to end gender-based violence has been forced to suspend or shut down programs due to disappearing funding. In a landscape where large swathes of our sector have been forced to close their doors, you insisted that Footage remain alive.

Earlier this month, I wrote that there were moments this year – watching hatred and dehumanization gather force – when it felt as if a small but vital light might flicker out, in our sector, in public life, or even within myself. Again and again, you held that light steady. You asked what you could do. You refused to mistake exhaustion for turning away, and you stood for what Footage represents: a belief that compassion can guide how we study, design, and act – that caring for others and instilling dignity is a form of resistance, and that together we can redraw the very contours of safety and connection.

This year reaffirmed something I have always known: this work is more than an intervention, it is service. It is compassion in action. Every day this year, three questions guided me forward: What can I do in this very moment to see the other side of despair? Who can I reach with compassion? How can I love better?

There is a belief, shared across various traditions, that human consciousness itself is held – lifted – by a handful of people who choose, again and again, to anchor care, moral clarity, and love in the world. Compassion is a frequency and a choice – one we must make repeatedly. This choice, no matter how we enact it, is never small. Every act of kindness, every difficult conversation entered with care, every time we stand up for ourselves or someone else, every time we humanize and see each other’s good – strangers, family, and friends alike – these acts are not incidental or insignificant: they are the work.

When writing this Appeal felt almost impossible, I remembered that truth: compassion is a practice, a discipline, and a profound responsibility. It is what carried me through this year, and what will carry us into 2026 and beyond. Standing here now, after a year of near-breaking points, those words feel even truer. At the end of 2024, I wrote that 2025 would challenge us in ways we could not yet imagine. That turned out to be more precise than I could have predicted.

I include an overview of our work in 2025 in this Appeal to not only show what you made possible – but to honor the immense, often unseen labor behind it. Even amid the most significant financial shock we have faced in close to 20 years, here are the ways we grew our impact in 2025:

Mental health in crises: Centering FemSMS Ukraine, a trauma-informed intervention coordinated and sustained by our team of determined Ukrainian young women. Alongside our steadfast dear friends and partners, Project Kesher and Project Kesher Ukraine, we reached over 12,000 women and gender-diverse people with 30,000+ trauma-informed messages through FemSMS Ukraine and Voices of Resilience. We centered memory, grief, and the ongoing war in our communications, ensuring Ukrainian realities remained visible and human. Simultaneously, we field-tested a secure, multilingual FemSMS app, set to launch in February 2026 in Ukrainian, French, and English.

Gender-based Violence and Collaboration: Among other initiatives, zooming in on Kyrgyzstan, in 2025 we moved PowerTools Kyrgyzstan forward,. In partnership with El Agartuu and with support from the U.S. Embassy in the Kyrgyz Republic, we implemented and advanced the PowerTools: Dialogue and Cooperation to End Violence intervention. A national needs assessment engaged 108 participants across all seven oblasts, documenting persistent trauma and critical training gaps. These findings informed our Voice & Participation Workshop and the Human Rights Day Stakeholder Summit in Bishkek. A White Paper will be disseminated early in the new year.

France: Establishing a European base, we marked a major milestone with the formal establishment of Footage France. Our presence was solidified through a Passeport Talent – personne de renommée internationale, which recognized the global impact of our interventions. Throughout the fall, our small, transnational team began building partnerships and shaping an expansion strategy grounded in feminist, compassion-led work within an increasingly challenging civic space.

Global Policy and Advocacy: Throughout 2025, we asserted that compassion is not a "soft" concept, but rather a political and strategic necessity for democratic resilience.

At CSW69, among several contributions, our main event, “Compassion in Action: Feminist and Narrative Methods for Transformation,” co-sponsored with the steadfast care and partnership of our dear friend and supporter Sharon Kathryn D’Agostino and SayItForward.org, was the only session among hundreds to foreground compassion in its title. Co-facilitated by Footage leadership, including Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton and Theodora Biney-Amissah, alongside long-time collaborators and friends, the event centered on Footage’s pioneering feminist ethnographic methods with communities affected by conflict.

We contributed to global mental health diplomacy at the Clinton Global Initiative, with the generous sponsorship and compassion of our dear friend and steadfast supporter Natasha Müller and Kokoro. Participating in their Coalition for Mental Health Investment roundtable, we advanced the argument that mental health in humanitarian crises and human rights contexts is not only personal but political – central to democratic resilience.

With the generous sponsorship of dear friends and steadfast supporters Katherine and John Sellery, I had the opportunity to bring Footage’s leadership to the 10th International Women’s Conference (IWC2025) in India. There, we celebrated Katherine Sellery’s Global Leadership in Conscious Parenting Award, aligning Footage with global movements for nonviolence.

In October, we engaged in an intensive series of talks:

We contributed to the “Justice at the Heart of Women, Peace and Security”event convened by the NGO CSW/NY Peace & Gender Equality Working Group, centering compassionate leadership as a model for participation.

At the 4th Feminist Foreign Policy Ministerial in Paris, we presented “Feminist Inquiry as Praxis” at a roundtable hosted by the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative (FFPC).

We presented and co-sponsored the workshop “Centering Compassionate Leadership” with the NGO CSW/NY Peace & Gender Equality Working Group and SeeD, asserting compassion as a strategy of resistance in policy spaces.

In November, I traveled to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for high-level briefings with the EU Delegation, UN Women Kyrgyzstan, GIZ, GFA, Search for Common Ground, and Ulan Nogoyboev, Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, advocating for survivor-centered strategies.

Through our ongoing advocacy and campaigning program we led narrative interventions across, for example, International Women’s Day, Pride Month, World Refugee Day, International Day of Peace and 16 Days of Activism, maintaining that compassion is a refuge amid escalating identity-based violence and more than 120 active global armed conflicts. We affirmed that refuge is not only a place, but a right – especially for LGBTQIA+ communities facing heightened risk. We chose hope over despair for girls through the International Day of the Girl and our “What Would You Say to Her?” campaign, drawing from Footage’s roots and interventions – Girl-talk-Girl, FemSMS, and Her{connect}Her – to frame violence as an issue communities can change through narrative solidarity and compassionate messaging to spark dialogue and response.

On Giving Tuesday, I shared that after a difficult night of reckoning with the numbers, we identified a clear threshold – $125,000 – to hold the ground we have built. This is the line between sustaining the work you have just read about and being forced to cut into our core. With immeasurable appreciation to so many of you, that gap is beginning to close – and I am deeply indebted.

This is not a visionary campaign target, but a survival necessity: it covers keeping FemSMS reaching people in crisis; staying present in Central Asia so PowerTools Kyrgyzstan remains a sustained intervention; and retaining an exceptionally small team so this work continues with integrity.

I have shared this with many of you, and will share it again here: despite devastating funding losses this year, we honored every possible contract with our team and partners. We were only able to do so because you stepped in where institutions and key funders withdrew. As we enter the new year, many members of our team will be working partially or entirely pro bono, as they have long contributed far beyond paid hours – because communities are asking, and because this is a team that does not walk away.

By training, I am an academic. During my PhD at Cambridge, I made a conscious decision that those who create knowledge carry a responsibility not only to theory, but to the public. I chose the path of an applied social scientist, committed to testing ideas in the world as it is – through direct collaboration with communities.

Footage became the space where this work lives: a feminist, participatory lab where knowledge is co-created with those most affected by violence and displacement. Compassionate leadership and service have always been at the heart of this work as disciplined practice. Even our structure has been part of that experiment – internal coherence as integrity. As I said to our team this year, we are always “in beta.” As we enter 2026, we are bringing what we do more boldly into our shared language. Going forward, you will hear us refer to our ecosystem as Footage Lab: a living laboratory for research, dialogue, and action rooted in compassion, feminist inquiry, and service. This is a slow and deliberate evolution shaped over many years.

I am writing this on the solstice – the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. A moment that asks us not to rush toward light, but to sit with where we are. Earlier this year, in a very difficult moment, a dear friend reminded me of Valerie Kaur’s question, one I shared with you in November 2024: What if the darkness is not a tomb, but a womb?

That reminder carried me. It also brought into sharp focus the people who have carried this work alongside me. I have never known a more dedicated team. While many around us were exhausted, this team showed up – including colleagues working in war zones and without reliable electricity or connections – through fear and uncertainty.

And this work has never been carried by the team alone. You are a crucial part of this circle.To those of you who have carried us through this year and so many before – with mind, heart, body, and soul – thank you. You continue to hold us, even as the ground feels unsteady. I do not take this for granted. I see you, and I feel you with us.

So before I close, I offer my appeal: if you have not yet had the opportunity to give this year, I ask that you consider a contribution. One-time donations help anchor our work, and monthly gifts – even modest ones – create stability that cannot be easily shaken. If you are unable to give financially, please consider passing along this Appeal or introducing us to new networks; these forms of support are deeply meaningful.

Footage exists because of you. Please do not forget this. With you beside us in 2026, we will continue showing up – steadily and rigorously – where we are most needed. My dedication and my devotion are unwavering. I know in my heart I can say the same for the entire Footage team.

On behalf of the team, I send you our enduring gratitude, our love, and our most fervent wishes for peace and compassion, as we stand together with grace.

I am yours, as ever, in service,

Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton
Executive Director & Co-Founder, Footage