Build the room with us.
For three years, AfroSwissters has run on our own time, our own savings, and the patience of our friends. This page is the first time we are asking, plainly, for help carrying it.
Pick an amount. We do the rest.
Donate with TWINT in the form below, or scan the QR code with your phone. Choose an amount or enter your own. The form is run by RaiseNow.
If the form does not load, open it on RaiseNow. Questions: contact@afroswissters.ch
Scan to donate
Scan the code with your phone camera. The donation form opens on your phone and you pay with TWINT.
Don’t have TWINT but want to support us? Email contact@afroswissters.ch.
Become a member
Steady support and a place in the network.
IIPartner or sponsor
For organisations, venues, funders and institutions.
IIIAttend & share
Come to an event, bring someone with you, share what we do.
Your support helps AfroSwissters keep building spaces with care, structure and access. For example: CHF 30–50 can help cover food, drinks, materials or room care for a small circle, workshop or gathering. CHF 60–120 can help make a place available for someone who could not otherwise afford to attend a workshop, retreat or cultural experience. CHF 250+ can help cover part of a facilitator, therapist, speaker, photographer, venue or production cost for an event.
Support also helps us with the less visible work: website costs, communication, planning, administration, registration tools, follow-ups and the time it takes to organise spaces responsibly.
We keep our promises realistic. Every contribution helps us create more consistent, thoughtful and accessible spaces for everyone in our network.
We built this network on purpose, with what we had. Now we want it to be bigger than what we can carry alone.
For three years, AfroSwissters has been built mostly with our own time, our own savings, and the patience of our friends. That was a deliberate choice. We wanted the rooms to belong to us, the agenda to be ours, the conversation to start where the people we work with actually are. Not where a funder thinks we should be.
That model has carried us further than we expected. It has also reached its limits.
What "self-funded" has actually looked like, said plainly: musicians who have played for free. Photographers asking only for the petrol to get to the venue. Mothers paying out of pocket for the food we feed the room. Women who lead, organise, mentor, and answer the messages at midnight, for years, almost never paid in money. The rooms exist because they paid for them, in time, in attention, in their own pockets. That is not a thing we can keep asking of them.
This page is the first time we are asking, plainly. Not for a one-off favour, not for visibility, not for the kind of sponsorship that comes with a logo and a panel slot. For the working capital that lets a volunteer-run network become a real institution.
Better venues. Fair fees for the women who lead our sessions. Residencies that pay. Programmes that travel beyond Zürich. And the unglamorous backend that makes any of it possible at all.
If you have been in the room, or wanted a room like this and never had one, this is the door.
Where the money goes.
Four lines on a budget that you would otherwise never see. Open any of them.
i.Spaces.
Venues that hold us. Recurring rent at Karl der Grosse, residency space, and the kind of room where no one has to translate themselves at the door.
ii.Cultural participation.
Cultural participation that isn't a panel. The talks, the readings, the studio visits, and the budget to actually pay the artists, founders, and practitioners who make them happen.
iii.Wellbeing.
Retreats, somatic facilitators, healing horizons. The parts of ambition that don't get airtime in a career circle but quietly decide whether anyone makes it to the next one.
iv.Equity. Empowerment.
Stipends for those who lead. Scholarships for those who need them. The operational scaffolding that lets a volunteer-run network quietly become an institution.
What different amounts make possible.
Five examples. Not fixed prices, just a sense of what your contribution actually does.
One seat at the next Career Circle, on someone who needed it
Covers a single Career Circle place, including snacks, the joining link, and the post-session resources for a participant who would otherwise pass.
An hour of a facilitator who is finally getting paid
A fair hourly rate for one of the women who leads a Rise & Thrive workshop. Until now, almost all of this has been goodwill. We want goodwill to be a choice, not a constraint.
An evening at a real venue, at the scale we want to operate
Hire of a Zürich room that fits the room we are becoming. Karl der Grosse for the workshops; something larger when the moment calls for it.
A full session run, from invite to follow-up
A complete Rise & Thrive event: facilitator, venue, materials, communications, photography, and the post-event editorial. The whole arc, paid properly.
Employment, not goodwill
Until now, the women who carry AfroSwissters have been compensated session by session at best, and often not at all. This is the contribution that begins to change that: a contract, a salary, social security, and the legal scaffolding to say “we hired her” instead of “she helped us out.” Major gifts at this level go towards funding a real role, building up to the full-time hire we have wanted for years. For organisations and major donors: write to contact@afroswissters.ch and we will talk personally.