In 2022, community leaders from grassroots organizations—Didihood, Tamil Women Rising, and South Asian and Tamil Women’s Collective came together to create the Didi Creative Fund. Didi (pronounced dee-dee) means sister in many South Asian languages including Hindi and Panjabi.

As leaders started to discuss ideas for collaboration, they each acknowledged a gap in creative funding opportunities to support South Asian and Tamil women and gender diverse communities. But, before we dive into learning about the Didi Creative Fund, it is important to understand “What is South Asian?”

The term South Asian is a colonial and racial construct (Gandhi, 2014). Historically, it served to problematically group individuals from particular nations together—Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Maldives—for the purposes of political, economic and geographical conquests (Shankar, 1999).

It is important to recognize the complexity of this racialization, as the term South Asian was also used to identify individuals who were indentured, required refuge, and immigrated from these regions to all of the world’s continents (Gnanadass, 2014). We recognize that groups within the diaspora have suffered at the hands of targeted political and civil actions, oppression and genocide. It is also important to name the intentional historic and on-going erasure of Tamil and minoritized identities from South Asian conversations. We do not take this intra-diasporic tension lightly. We know that intra-cultural differences arising from faith, culture, and traditions are used as tools for neo-colonial oppression to divide our communities from collective efficacy (Anouch, 2014). The community has been reclaiming the term South Asian to represent the diaspora as a whole. We are committed to striving for solidarity amongst all the diverse communities by recognizing differences and intentionally fostering unity.

Now that we have learned more about the term “South Asian,” it’s important to understand that South Asians are the largest racialized group in Ontario and Canada (Statistics Canada Census, 2021). Immigration and settlement patterns to Canada started in the early 1900s, and waves of migration from South Asian Countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) have occurred over time due to political unrest in home countries or the need for skilled immigrants in Canada. The South Asian community is often perceived as a monolithic group, and it’s important to challenge this identity assumption, as the diaspora is large with various cultural knowledges and traditions, histories, languages, religions, and practices.

As community leaders, designing programming, initiatives and funding for community by community, we are also continuously challenged with the complexity of identities and experiences that South Asians in Canada experience. We continue to reflect on the tensions, assets and relationships within and across the diaspora.

About the Didi Creative Fund

The desire for community leaders to focus attention on creating the Didi Creative Fund came out of two core goals: 1) the lack of funding programming and resources to support the South Asian and Tamil community, and 2) the challenges and issues the arts and culture sector experienced during the pandemic and continues to experience post pandemic.

We collectively decided to pilot the Didi Creative Fund by creating a giving circle between our three organizations. According to the Toronto Foundation, a giving circle is a form of collaborative philanthropy where groups of individuals donate to a shared fund, and together decide where to give their money. Members share the goal of increasing their impact on the issues they care about and engagement with charities they choose to support.

In our pilot year, we pooled $1500 and gave out three micro-grants of $500 each to support creatives and artists with buying materials, enrolling in a course, curating an event, and/or attending a retreat or program.

In 2023, we gained more interest from community members who wanted to contribute to the giving circle and raised $4000, enabling 8 micro-grant awards. The interest in our creative fund got us featured on Toronto’s City News. We launched the fund again this year, and raised $2500. To learn more about awarded fund recipients and their creative projects, check out the didihood Instagram page.

We hope to launch our next round of funding in April 2025, and announce fund recipients in May 2025 during South Asian Heritage month.

Herleen Arora is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of South Asian and Tamil Women’s Collective. She co-created the Didi Creative Fund with community leaders from Didihood and Tamil Women Rising. If you are interested in being a patron and contributing to the Didi Creative Fund, please email thedidihood@gmail.com