Promoting women’s leadership

Women’s Voice and Leadership (WVL) projects in Mali, Senegal, and Haiti support the networks of women’s organizations to act at the individual, family, and community levels. Their aim is to ensure that women have access to essential services that are adapted and sensitive to their issues, live a life free of violence and participate in decision-making spaces. In this way, they can assert their rights in a supportive and inclusive environment.

Find this article in CECI's 2023-2024 annual report

In the face of discrimination, women’s networks are a major force for change and play a key role in communities’ resilience to the crises they face. Advances in women’s rights and gender equality in each country at the legal, political, socio-cultural, and economic levels are largely attributable to their commitment.

The WVL projects in brief :

• 3 countries Mali, Haiti, Senegal
• 86 partner organizations
• Over 730,000 people reached directly of whom 82% are women
• 17 strengthened networks, representing over 600 organizations
• Nearly 1.8 million people affected indirectly

More stable organizations

In order to translate the mobilization of women’s rights organizations into tangible, widespread, and sustainable impact, the WVL projects have helped to consolidate
these organizations with training and technical and financial support. Legal structures were established, governance strengthened, technology integrated, and
management practices improved. As a result, the organizations are now better structured and more resilient.

With stronger organizations advocating for women’s rights, the collective action and synergy of the women’s movement is reinforced.

All of the supported networks have become more effective in promoting and defending women’s and young women’s rights and gender equality

Optimized services

With support from the WVL projects, partner organizations now offer higher-quality, more inclusive, innovative, and collaborative services that creatively address identified needs, in both form and content. With the project in Mali, over 400 children in five regions participated in a competition. By sharing their vision of effective awareness raising through skits, poems, comics, drawings, and slam, they inspired the partner organizations to adapt their actions. The winners then formed clubs of young ambassadors for the rights of women and girls in their schools, becoming true agents of change.

Over 200 initiatives were supported financially, to extend the scope of the actions conducted to areas not covered by the projects or to respond to specific needs

Strengthened advocacy

Through training, tools, and the promotion of a collaborative approach, women’s organizations and networks increased their influence on policies, on laws, on the legal institutions, and in their communities. Now more credible and visible thanks to the project’s actions, they are providing more social monitoring, acting in synergy, and strengthening their ties with strategic actors like religious leaders, local and customary authorities, and the media.

19 agreements were signed between the networks and strategic leaders in Senegal, solidifying their commitment to women’s rights

We are witnessing a revitalization of women’s movements in the three countries, with young women mobilizing to defend their rights, organizations forming networks, initiatives being shared, and collective actions growing stronger in response to threats to women’s and girls’ rights.

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CECI's 2023-2024 annual report