The YW4A partnership is a unique collaboration of the Netherlands Government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, young women, feminists and gender equality champions, faith-based advocates, gender researchers and legal and policy experts, all coming together to influence political decision-making at all levels.
As girls grow into young women, they increasingly find their voices silenced in patriarchal families, communities and political spaces, and are subject to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
Women in Egypt, Kenya, Palestine and South Sudan face multiple layers of violence and discrimination and lack of full access to human rights. Due to several factors that include patriarchal norms, politics e.g. the ongoing Israeli Occupation since 1967 in Palestine and internal conflict in South Sudan, social and cultural norms that are biased against women’s leadership in social, economic, and political arenas, women regularly face exclusion, discrimination, violence, threats, intimidation, movement restrictions, and all forms of violence. The impact of the rapidly evolving and unpredictable Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these challenges. The gaps in women’s legal protection frameworks and legal status laws, along with the laws regarding women’s leadership and participation in decision-making are still a persistent problem across countries in Africa and the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) regions and social strata within the countries.
Safe spaces, peer networks, intergenerational leadership, widespread promotion of young women’s rights, and support of local communities are key drivers for young women’s leadership in private, public and civic spaces. In addition, ending young women’s exclusion from decision making and exposure to SGBV requires an ecosystem approach that transforms formal and informal norms and behaviour, at multiple levels. The YW4A programme and its partners, therefore, aim to create and enhance an environment where these conditions are met for the realisation of women’s rights.
The programme strategy is a bottom-up process that strengthens the capacity of young women and local women’s rights organisations (WROs) to take up leadership role, while increasing the civic space through networking, movement-building, and synergies, to amplify their voices and claim their rights.
Through its international policy on women’s rights and gender equality, the Netherlands contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 5 on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. A crosscutting goal of Dutch foreign policy and foreign trade and development cooperation is the Dutch international gender policy, which the government aims to achieve through gender diplomacy and gender mainstreaming. The government also has gender-specific programmes, such as Power of Women (PoW), through which the YW4A initiative and other similar programmes are funded.
PoW programmes aim to strengthen the capacity of women’s rights organisations in lobbying and advocacy. In turn, these women’s rights organisations can foster social, economic and/or political transformation, to achieve equal rights and opportunities for women and girls globally. The three main objectives of these initiatives are:
The World YWCA is a global movement that connects and mobilises the power of millions of women, young women, and girls from across regions, cultures, and beliefs to transform their lives and the world, for the better. Its work is grassroots-driven, grounded in local communities, and rooted in the transformational power of women towards the YWCA’s movement #Goal2035. #Goal2035 envisions 100 million young women and girls transforming power structures to create justice, gender equality and a world without violence and war; leading a sustainable YWCA movement, inclusive of all women by 2035. The World YWCA creates opportunities for women to connect, mobilise, and inspire each other to take action to protect their rights, address inequalities, and promote justice around important issues such as gender-based violence, leadership, inclusion and participation, as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights.
In addition to the overall YW4A partnership and programme management and oversight, World YWCA is also the programme’s technical lead in strengthening the leadership of young women to effectively engage in collective action and decision-making in public, private, and civic spaces. To achieve this, World YWCA uses its RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership model, a peer-to-peer agency, leadership and advocacy training and mobilisation approach to build knowledge, skills and networks to take action on their priority issues, such as violence against women and girls, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender equality.
Using the Safe Spaces concept and the Young Women’s Feminist Consultation Methodology, World YWCA adopts highly participatory and inclusive approaches to capture evidence for continuous analysis and use of information by and with young women, regarding their priorities, barriers to their rights and relevant platforms for engagement, self-organisation and collaboration for advocacy.
YWCA Kenya is a women and youth membership-based; non-governmental development organisation with a 109-year history. It is affiliated with the World YWCA, with the main purpose to develop the collective power of girls and women in Kenya, to achieve social, economic, political and cultural emancipation. YWCA Kenya uses the power of safe spaces to dismantle deep-rooted discrimination and inequality through its programming and to achieve its vision of; “An inclusive society in Kenya where girls and women actualize their potential and live fulfilled lives”
The objectives of the YW4A programme aligns with one of the organisation’s strategic goals to enhance the leadership of young women as articulated in the 2019-2023 Strategic Plan. YWCA Kenya brings to the programme its expertise and experience in working with young women, and its networks and allies at different levels of decision making and among communities including the faith sector in the country and East Africa region.
Through its intergenerational leadership model, YWCA Kenya as the YW4A implementation lead in Kenya, facilitates the capacity building, inclusion and meaningful participation and leadership of young women in key decision-making spaces in private, public and civic structures by addressing challenges that include SGBV and intimate partner violence (IPV).
Women’s Rights Organisations:
Faith-based Organisations:
IMC is a faith-based organisation, affiliated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Egypt. It was established in 2005 in Alexandria to support the Arab communities in enjoying a better quality of life. The organisation’s mission is to promote peaceful co-existence and human rights through capacity building, creating common spaces, raising awareness, and enhancing communities’ knowledge on their rights and skills to advocate for their realisation.
IMC works with marginalised groups to advocate for gender equality, peace and reconciliation, and also builds the capacity of civil society organisations in this endeavour. Working towards advancing society to a better life, through the adoption, design and implementation of a set of development initiatives that contribute to gender equality and combating poverty in all its forms.In the YW4A programme, IMC is leading the implementation of the programme in Egypt, while working to build the leadership and management capacities of partner women’s rights organisations. IMC, through its convening power of faith actors and CSOs, supports young women to access crucial decision-making spaces and amplifies their voices in advocacy towards gender-just laws, policies, and norms. IMC also brings to the programme valuable experience in media production for social change and a mission to engage faith authorities in a faith-led strategy for the reform of discriminatory family laws in Egypt.
Women’s Rights Organisations:
Faith-based Organisations:
The YWCA of Palestine is a non-governmental association initiated in 1893 by informal groups of Christian women and was formally established in Jerusalem in 1918. The work of the YWCA is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the mission to contribute to a free and democratic civil society where women and youth are empowered to exercise and protect their political, economic, and social rights.
YWCA Palestine believes in the ability and potential of young people to be agents of change. The organisation, therefore, works to enhance young women’s access to educational and cultural activities, create and develop economic opportunities, raise awareness, and advocate for their individual and national rights. The YWCA also provides young people, especially young women with leadership and representation opportunities within the Palestinian society.
In the YW4A programme, YWCA Palestine is leading country implementation by engaging and mobilising young women, women’s rights organisations and faith partners to strengthen civil society in the country, and galvanise action to influence policies and legislation that promotes women’s rights. This is in line with international treaties and charters to ensure equality, non-discrimination, and combat all forms of gender-based violence. The YWCA is contributing to influencing societal discourse by enhancing awareness of the scale, impact and risks of violence against women, as well as the inclusion of young women in decision making spaces.
Women’s Rights Organisations:
Faith-based Organisations:
YWCA South Sudan was established in 1997 as a women’s group in the local Anglican Church of Yambio town in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan. The organisation’s mission is to empower women, girls and youth in South Sudan to achieve justice, peace, health, human dignity, and a sustainable environment to develop their leadership skills and values to effectively participate in nation-building. The vision of the organisation is to ensure a society where the human rights of women and girls and a sustainable environment are promoted, achieved and protected through women’s leadership.
The YWCA has a deep knowledge of local and national realities of young women, and through participation in different local and national forums, continues to be a respected entry point to the community, faith, and political actors in the country. Through its work in young women’s empowerment, psychosocial support on trauma healing and counselling, peace and justice, women economic empowerment, advocacy, education, health and wellbeing, YWCA South Sudan actively addresses the consequences of civil and tribal conflict, discriminatory cultural practices and conservative faith interpretations that have undermined the promotion of equal rights and the participation of women in private, public and civic spaces in the country. In the YW4A programme, YWCA South Sudan leads programme implementation in the country. The organisation’s vision for the programme is to support young women with knowledge of their rights and leadership and advocacy skills to hold decision-makers accountable for the protection of women and girls from harmful practices and social norms.
Women’s Rights Organisations:
Faith-based Organisations:
The gender team from KIT Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) draws on more than 25 years of experience in international development. Our work focuses on stand-alone gender equality, women’s empowerment and rights initiatives, as well as on the integration of gender equality and empowerment into agriculture, private sector, finance and health programmes. In addition to our gender and thematic expertise, we bring rich experience in organisational change, capacity development and learning, knowledge management and applied research. In our projects and knowledge work, we collaborate with partners and research associates worldwide.
The empowerment of women and girls and the realisation of their rights calls for transformative change at the individual, organisational, and institutional levels. KIT has a long-standing track record of collaborating with women and girls to transform power structures that reproduce gender inequality. KIT brings this experience into the YW4A programme, where it is responsible for designing the gender-transformative outcome Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) of the programme, and supports in the design of YW4A baseline studies and outcome monitoring and learning at mid-term and end-line of the programme.
Moreover, KIT designed and implements the women’s rights organisations’ advocacy and organisational capacity assessment and learning agenda. The outcome MEL system and learning mechanisms are co-created with a reference group of young women in each country. Together with these young women, women’s rights organisations and consortium members, KIT hopes to help shift power relations within institutions and organisations, strengthen the leadership capacity of young women and women’s rights organisations, and fulfil young women’s rights to dignity, bodily integrity and equal participation in decision-making.
Equality Now is an international human rights organisation that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls in the areas of legal equality, harmful practices, sexual violence, and sexual exploitation, with a cross-cutting focus on adolescent girls. Equality Now combines grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy to achieve legal and systemic change for women and girls, and works to ensure that governments enact and enforce laws that uphold their rights. Equality Now has a global presence and a diverse network of partners and members in almost every country.
YW4A holds a unique blend of expertise and voices that, combined with the experiences and energy of the young women that the consortium works with, has the power to shape enduring equality for women, young women and girls in Egypt, Palestine, South Sudan and Kenya.
Equality Now brings to the YW4A consortium its expertise and experience in legal equality and systemic change. Using this, Equality Now is the technical lead for the programme’s strategy of using legal advocacy to address legal and policy gaps that undermine the protection of women and girls from sexual violence, discrimination and exclusion. Through its regional offices in Kenya and Lebanon, Equality Now will do this using a combination of legal advocacy, regional partnership-building, and activist mobilisation.
F2A supports faith actors to empower people to live healthy, peaceful, and quality lives. As a global interfaith network of 110 Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu and Muslim faith organisations, we focus on issues that faith actors are grappling with, including sexual and reproductive health and family planning; gender equality and women’s rights; pluralism and understanding.
F2A Network believes that faith is central in women’s and men’s lives across the world. It influences their life, identity, and behaviour. The organisation’s vision for the YW4A programme is that social norms and practices by community actors and faith organisations are shifted towards promoting young women’s rights to dignity, bodily integrity and equal participation in decision-making. F2A brings to the programme its experience and understanding of religion as a salient aspect of culture, and, therefore, faith actors’ influence and potential to contribute to the goal of YW4A. F2A will build the capacity of faith actors who will then challenge gender-discriminatory social norms and promote women’s rights. This will be done through local social and behavioral change communication by faith champions, opinion leaders, and groups.
The programme strategy is a bottom-up process that strengthens the capacity of young women and local women’s rights organisations (WROs) to take up leadership role, while increasing the civic space through networking, movement-building, and synergies, to amplify their voices and claim their rights. The programme links individuals, local, national, and global women’s rights movements thereby setting in motion the structural processes towards transformational change at different levels. For this purpose, the programme also focuses on norms and legal reforms in religious institutions and the public sphere by promoting requisite human rights frameworks, especially for women.
The YW4A programme model is piloting an interdisciplinary and intergenerational approach to young women’s transformative leadership and tackling SGBV in Egypt, Kenya, Palestine, and South Sudan. Through collaboration with progressive allies, and targeting power structures that hinder the realisation of young women’s rights, World YWCA works with YWCA members associations and technical partners with expertise and rich experience in gender equality research, lobbying and advocacy, as influencing positive norms and practices in the faith sector.
The programme is the first to roll out the World YWCA RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership model to countries outside the Asia and Pacific regions. Using lessons from this model and the new approach in Africa and the MENA regions, YW4A will inform the creation of an integrated evidence-based programme model that can be adapted to other regional and country contexts, to reach and positively impact young women globally.