South East and East Asian Women's Association
We are an inclusive organisation improving the lives of ESEA women and children in the UK.
We support a movement of women change makers, to lead in the emancipation of our community from disadvantage, injustice and institutional misogyny and patriarchy. We campaign for racial justice through the women’s lens and aspire for a society that allows our community to live with dignity. We campaign to relieve poverty or financial hardship and to end violence among women and our dependents within the ESEA UK community. We provide a safe space, advocacy, health, housing, education, co-learning and other holistic support and services.
.png)
During the Covid pandemic, when increasing number of women in our community were experiencing gender violence, a collective of women, called the Gabriela -UK chapter formed a group to support the intersectional need of migrant and refugee women from different countries from East and Southeast Asia. We worked together to register our organisation as Gabriela Safehaven for Women.
Whilst waiting for registration to be approved, the trustees and volunteers continued to work with women through support and networking with other women’s organisations. We began to adapt a brand name which better explained our objectives as the Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association. We decided that this would be our brand name for the registered charity Gabriela Safehaven for Women. It was an organic formation and came about through our daily work and engagement. The Gabriela Safehaven for Women is the registered charity for the grassroots formation of the Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association which is an inclusive description of our group.
SEEAWA Today
We are a unique organisation empowering Southeast and East Asian women. Our aim is to organise in our community to change and improve the lives of women members of our communities.
We are a group of SE Asian migrants who have come together as a collective of women to build a network of support for other ESEA women in the UK. We all have experiences of the issues that women in our community face. Although we come from different countries, our experiences are linked by common issues, including immigration, asylum seeking, trafficking, living and working with experience of exploitation in the UK.
We are all part of the ESEA diaspora, whether we are recent immigrants or second or third generations who are more established in the UK. We support those who experience everyday issues such as difficulty in access to services, language barriers, racism, sexism or gender discrimination, and domestic violence.
We represent EASA women, and our trustees and members are also part of the LGBTQI and disabled communities.