Our Origin Story

It was July, 2025. It was Seoul.

 

Seven women found themselves seated together on a panel at an international conference. They had come from different corners of the world and different stages of life, from early-career scholars to seasoned experts, each carrying decades of lived experience between them.

 

They had been invited to speak about decolonizing feminist foreign policy. What unfolded was more than academic debate. It was personal, layered with conviction and a shared sense of purpose.

 

When the session concluded, they did not part ways immediately. Instead, they chose to linger, drawn together by something not yet fully articulated.

 

They walked to lunch.

 

It was raining lightly, the kind of rain that softens rather than disrupts. Their table was set beside the grounds of Bongeunsa Temple, a centuries-old sanctuary in the heart of Gangnam. A sharp contrast to the modern expanse of an international conference center from which they left. Lotus flowers bloomed in pink and white. Lanterns swayed. A towering Buddha watched in silent permanence.

 

It was a fitting place for something to begin.

 

Seoul itself exists between worlds, neither firmly “Global North” nor “Global South”, resisting easy categorization. In that sense, it mirrored the group gathered within it: thinkers and practitioners who had long moved across borders, refusing the divisions that too often determine who shapes global policy and who does not.

 

History has a habit of beginning this way. Not from grand institutional design, but from the intimacy of shared presence, the moment when conversation becomes commitment.

 

That afternoon in Seoul, something shifted.

 

An eighth joined them there beside the lotus blooms, a young woman not yet out of her teens, drawn naturally into the circle. While the language of feminist foreign policy was still unfamiliar to her, the essence was not: women’s voices matter.

 

In that rain-softened afternoon, in the quiet intimacy of timeless space shared by ancestors before them, something unexpected became undeniable.

 

Why, after sharing their ideas, their passions, fragments of themselves, should they return to isolated efforts, separate corners, business as usual?

 

The question pointed somewhere larger.

 

And then, quietly, it took form.

 

Feminist foreign policy has gained real momentum in recent years. But its thinking has been dominated by elite, male-run, American and European institutions. The voices carrying the deepest knowledge, those most shaped by the very policies under debate, have been sidelined in the spaces that claim to reimagine global governance. And yet majority world governments are now stepping forward to lead in this landscape. The moment, they felt, was critical. 

 

What began as a resolve not to lose touch became a conversation. The conversation became a connection. The connection found its first home in a WhatsApp group.

 

When it needed a name, the youngest among them offered one, lightly, almost in passing. A single word, received with immediate recognition: VOCAL. It captured not only what they had spoken that day, but what they had quietly resolved to become.

 

What they had felt was not an ending. It was an origin.

 

From that informal beginning, something larger took shape. Not hurriedly, but with intention. Not loudly, but with clarity.

 

The group continued to grow as two more influential scholar-activists joined from distant regions. Their participation, shaped by deep experience in collectives and decolonizing feminist foreign policy, blended seamlessly into the evolving circle, strengthening the foundation established in Seoul.

 

They embodied VOCAL’s vision: scholar-activists shaping decolonizing feminist foreign policy, living their values.

 

With ten members, their journey was solid.

 

Together they set out to build what was missing: a transnational organization of feminist thinkers, activists, and practitioners from the Majority World. Their vision: to reimagine foreign policy with justice, care, decoloniality, and ecological sustainability. VOCAL’s strength is their togetherness: voices joined in purpose, informed by distinct lived experience, building transformative alternatives as a community.

 

Born beside lotus flowers, in the oldest of ways — non-conformers resisting and building together so voices and vision flourish.

 

This is the story of VOCAL… and it is only the beginning.