About Inter Pares
When you "Take Back the Day," you're not just honouring women in your life – you're honouring and supporting women working for social change all over the world.
Gifts to Inter Pares contribute to the work of a wide variety of organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Canada. While they are in different contexts, they are all addressing structural roots of poverty, injustice, and obstacles to public participation, and promoting more equitable futures. Most of them work at the national level but collaborate closely with grassroots groups, and also connect internationally with others.
Inter Pares engages on issues as varied as violence against women, food sovereignty, refugees and displaced people's rights, peacebuilding, health, and just economies. The threads that connect our work are solidarity and social justice: strengthening the capacity of communities – especially the most marginalized – to influence the social, economic, and political structures that affect their lives.
What is Inter Pares?
The name Inter Pares means "among equals" in Latin, and reflects our belief in the equality of people, North and South. Inter Pares was founded in 1975 on a commitment to promote peace and justice in Canada and internationally. We believe that this is our responsibility as Canadians, and that we must do so by collaborating with and supporting the struggles for justice of people around the world.
This means that we do not have overseas offices, or public profile in the other countries where we work. Instead, we relate to organizations and activists working in their own countries to confront injustice, helping them strengthen their work so they can occupy the political space that belongs to them. Most of them are from countries that have past or present internal armed conflict and dictatorships. We place a special emphasis on the leadership of women and of marginalized communities.
How does Inter Pares work?
Inter Pares works with groups around the world who are promoting justice in many ways: we raise money and political support in the North for Southern activism; we bring our strategic perspective and our feminist analysis to program development; we work in coalition, connecting our colleagues with others we know who are struggling with the same issues; and we engage in policy advocacy and public education here at home. We also support domestic social justice work here that fits into our global concerns, and bring together Canadian and international activists who share common cause. To learn more, please visit www.interpares.ca.
About "Take Back the Day"
"Take Back the Day" celebrates the activist roots of Mother's Day by raising funds for women and organizations working towards social transformation, and by offering a gift-giving alternative to people who care about peace and justice.
On a day many think was conceived by greeting card companies, our Mother's Day cards pay tribute to women who launched the holiday, to mothers and women making a difference in our communities, and to women creating change around the world.
