Rights Awareness and Leadership Education

Regaining Strength, Stability, and Stature

Women’s progress will not be sustained without the active community engagement-which means the support of male traditional, civic, religious and military leaders. As we have learned in 16 years of development and humanitarian practice, when women and men together understand and advocate for women’s rights and participation in society, dramatic, societal change is possible.

We offer women a safe space to discuss their social, economic and political rights. Through this rights-based approach, women realize their value and their potential.

Sponsorship contributions also support a woman’s year-long participation in the Renewing Women’s Life Skills (ReneWLS) Program that provides her with rights awareness, leadership education and vocational and technical skills training. Through storytelling and workshops, we share knowledge with women about their worth and the importance of women’s roles and rights in society. The women form support groups to discuss issues such as the importance of education, voting rights, domestic violence and how to protect their health. Women from different religious or ethnic groups find common ground and often decide to pool resources to start businesses. Together, they actualize their rights and support one another.

Throughout her year in the program, she meets regularly with a group of approximately 20-25 women for rights awareness training sessions based on Women for Women International’s training manual, A Woman’s World. These meetings create a support network for women who may have lost everything during war and violence. Relying on her network becomes critical to a woman regaining control of her life after war.

Access to Knowledge and Voice:  

When women develop and cultivate leadership skills, they gain power to actively participate in the reconstruction of their communities and build civil society. The rights-based education and leadership development program helps women understand their unique rights politically, as victims of war and community violence and as a force to bring about stability; economically, in understanding their economic value to family and society; and socially, in acquiring skills to fight discrimination and domestic violence, and obtaining basic knowledge of human reproduction, nutrition, stress management, hygiene and the prevention and treatment of prevalent diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

• 61% of participants from Bosnia, Kosovo & Nigeria believe women can make changes in society – a nearly 200% increase over enrollment
• Globally, graduates report higher rightsawareness (87%); self-confidence and decision-making abilities (52%); and community involvement (52%)
• In Afghanistan, 94% of graduates said they have greater participation in familydecisions and 56% were sending girls to school who were not previously attending
• 94% of WfWI-Afghanistan graduates report contributing to family decision-making

We adapt our ReneWLS Program to be sensitive to the social, economic, political, cultural and religious context of each country. We offer additional services to meet local needs:

• Malaria prevention in Rwanda
• Trauma counseling to rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Outreach to victims of human trafficking in Kosovo
• Training in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other disease prevention in Nigeria
• Voter registration and political education in Afghanistan
• Encouraging women’s collective action in Iraq
• Cultivating rural women leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Men's Leadership Training

We also recognize the importance of involving men in the training for women's rights. Our Men’s Leadership Program (MLP) trains men on topics including the value of women and girls, female participation in family and community decision-making, violence against women, and personal and family health, and engages them as advocates educating and engaging other local men on MLP topics. Participants thus become agents of change in their communities

Outreach

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