Issue 24 (Summer 2009)

The room was buzzing. One youth group producing an original YouTube video on domestic violence. Another creating a poster urging youngsters to volunteer. All members of a third team busy on Facebook, inviting friends to join their newly-created group to fight child abuse. More sights such as these were part of the Youth Tech Festival in Jordan where over 90 young women and men (with a 9 all-female technology training team) gathered to acquire hands-on skills to utilize emerging technologies to advocate for social change.

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Activists press their governments throughout the Arab world to fully implement the UN Women's Rights Convention

By Lina Abou Habib*

More than 100 representatives -- from 43 women's organizations from 14 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf -- met in Amman, Jordan on the 26th and 27th of June 2009 upon the invitation of the Equality without Reservation regional campaign coalition. This meeting came at a time when conservative political powers had launched a campaign against women’s groups demanding that CEDAW (the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) reservations be lifted in Jordan.

During the two-day gathering, participants shared information about the power and potential of CEDAW and the Optional Protocol** as international instruments which can and should be used by women’s organizations locally to demand Arab states to honor commitments to gender equality and women’s rights.

Partners revise and adapt the WLP draft curriculum for peer-to-peer strategic planning and capacity building.

With 'Peer-to-Peer Strategic Planning' colleagues help each other develop and evaluate their organizations' long-term sustainability plans

WLP and its partners are piloting a new process where peers cooperate to help each other's organizations through the strategic planning process. In peer-to-peer strategic planning, individuals familiar with the organization and its activities, and equally committed to its success, participate in developing plans for the future. Most critically, a peer has linguistic compatibility and socio-cultural understanding, and also shares the history and values of the Partnership, vision for gender justice, and knowledge of the women's movement and culturally-adapted strategies in women's rights work. This allows for deeper understanding and clearer communication between the facilitator and the organization in the strategic planning process.

HRH Princess Basma receives the first copy of the Arabic multimedia leadership curriculum

WLP and its Jordan partner worked together with colleagues in Lebanon and Palestine to create the Arabic edition of Leading to Choices: A Multimedia Curriculum for Leadership Learning. The curriculum’s three DVDs, dubbed in Arabic, use the voices of well-known actors from Jordan and the region to share new concepts in a familiar idiom. The curriculum includes a training handbook and three guides that provide interactive, scenario-based activities. Examples of participatory and democratic learning throughout the curriculum enable human rights and democracy activists, educators, women leaders, and facilitators to learn how to implement successful advocacy campaigns, communicate effectively with the media, and train trainers.

CAC’s executive director, Tolekan Ismailova, presents a copy of the new Kyrgyz manual

WLP's partner in Kyrgyzstan releases the newest (18th language) edition of Leading to Choices

WLP’s partner in Kyrgyzstan, Human Rights Center/Citizens Against Corruption (CAC) tested and adapted the newest language edition of Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women in Kyrgyz. It is the 18th language in which the manual is available. CAC’s executive director, women’s rights activist Tolekan Ismailova, described the publication as the “first leadership training manual in the Kyrgyz language.” CAC added to the edition new scenarios that are meaningful to their constituents. One such scenario is about a journalist’s story of perseverance after being imprisoned on false charges in Kyrgyzstan.