Year: 2018
#FacesofLeadership: Meet the women of the Ceo Forum, Valnora Edwin.
#FacesofLeadership: Meet the women of the Ceo Forum, Valnora Edwin.
The CEO Forum and coaching programme, designed by African feminists, develops the individual and collective leadership skills of women leaders who are at different points in their careers (senior, mid-level and emerging). As a Capacity Building Programme, this space also addresses critical gap areas while strengthening institutional and governance structures and providing an enabling framework for their sustainability. With this 7th CEO Forum and 4th coaching programme, we have over the years gained specialised knowledge of the persistent challenges African women’s organisations contend with concerning resource mobilisation, communications, governance, leadership transition, safety and wellbeing.
The story below, is from one of the participants of the CEO forum and Manda program. She describes how the programme has changed not only her approach to leadership, but her approach to life in general.
VALNORA EDWIN
Executive Director: Campaign for Good Governance
Sierra Leone
“This has been a mind-opening experience. I think of a quote that says, It’s not about you but it’s all about you. It’s not anything personal about you but there’s a lot you have to do about yourself to be a better person. As the CEO, you take the lead in making the organisation a better place. There have been quite a lot of conversations both in the sessions and informally that shows that you are not alone. You feel you are alone in the bad experiences – you have a feeling of, is something wrong with me? What am I not doing right? Am I not communicating well? But in conversation we realise that it is something common but we need to work on ourselves to make things better.
The Wheel of Life – the nature and pace of the organisation – we’re all paying attention to that rather than ourselves. We need to work on ourselves, reflect and set targets and goals and that will help us to strengthen the team. I want my colleagues to do some reflection. Our governance structure is not too bad but it could be better than what we have now. While we were doing the baseline evaluation, in practice we are doing a couple of things but in terms of formalizing and developing tools, written policies and structures, these are things we will work on when we return to the office.
I’m very excited about the coaching and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m in another leadership training program in Sierra Leone which is also a 9-month program and it’s almost similar. This is preparing me for the next level – I don’t know what – and so I am excited for being equipped to do this”.
AWDF launches the Flourish Project with support from NoVo’s Radical Hope Fund
AWDF launches the Flourish Project with support from NoVo’s Radical Hope Fund
AWDF is thrilled to have been selected for support under the NoVo Foundation’s Radical Hope fund- a bold and imaginative initiative that seeks to support efforts focused on nurturing the movements we need and deepening our collective ability to build a more just and balanced world.
We are looking to re-inspire radical hope amongst African feminists through Flourish Project- a three-year initiative that will strengthen feminist organising across Africa through three key interventions:
- Seedinginspiration for the growth of African feminist movements through intergenerational dialogues and documenting a generation of liberation-era feminist trailblazers;
- Grounding through a pilot model of a retreat for African feminist activists facing burnout and stress, and in need of a reflective and healing space—designed and implemented in collaboration with AIR, a network of African practitioners developing transformative feminist approaches to trauma, emotional wellbeing, and mental health
- Connectingfeminist activists to convene and grow their organising at national and community levels linked to the African Feminist Forum.
“The Flourish Project aims to do what the name suggests- refresh and tend to the vibrant movement of African feminists who have and will continue to shape the future of Africa” says Jessica Horn, Director of Programmes at AWDF. “We are excited that Novo has recognised the need to invest in the deep movement work that also needs support alongside frontline advocacy: the work of documenting and sharing our activist legacies, of finding durable ways to sustain activists working in hostile terrain, and of keeping movement strategy and base-building spaces alive”.
For more information on Radical Hope, read the Novo Foundation press release here
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