WomenLead in Peace and Stability

Nov. 1, 2006—Fifteen women activists from nine conflict-affected countries have joined CEDPA in Washington for a four-week workshop designed to advance their leadership skills in their organizations and communities.

WomenLead in Promoting Peace and Stability brings together women from the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Sudan and Uganda—all areas that have recently experienced violent conflict.

These leaders are responding to conflict by bringing youth into the peace process, operating schools for displaced children, providing reproductive health care for refugees, shaping policy frameworks and bringing women into the political process.

CEDPA’s WomenLead workshop strengthens their technical and leadership skills through training sessions on advocacy, communications, fundraising and institutional management as well as on new approaches to understanding conflict, women and the peace process, and justice, healing and reconciliation. Participants also will visit organizations and donor groups advancing peace and security issues.

An initial workshop session looked at the attitudes, behaviors and structures that cause conflict and explored the ways women are affected as conflicts form, escalate and become violent. Other technical sessions include topics on gender-based violence, women and the peace process, and reconciliation efforts to build a more lasting peace.

This year’s WomenLead workshop is the second in CEDPA’s series. The first, WomenLead in the Fight Against AIDS, was held in 2005 and included 12 women leaders of HIV/AIDS organizations in 10 countries. Read their stories here.

  What is RSS?