Author: African Women's Development Fund

[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]Young Women Campaign Against AIDS (YWCAA)

Young Women Campaign Against AIDS (YWCAA) is a registered Non Governmental Organization in Kenya founded by a group of young female University graduates. The group that began as a merry-go-round in 2000 had an objective of economic empowerment through member contribution and loaning facility for members to start up businesses for economic empowerment. It was later registered in November 2002 as a Community Based Organization; and as a Non Governmental Organization in Nairobi, Kenya in 2004 to address the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS.

YWCAA is a female run organization. Its’ governance and operations are done by a group of dedicated women. The Board is the policy making organ of the organization. The management committee is headed by the Executive Director (ED) and is involved in ensuring management and project implementation is carried out effectively by a team of staff comprising of the Project Coordinator, Project Assistant/Field Officer and Administrative/Finance Officer. Other personnel involved include 2 Team leaders, 4 Community liaison persons and 6 Volunteers who are called upon when need arises.

Please Download this document about Tribute from YWCAA[/tp]

[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]La Campagne des Jeunes femmes contre le SIDA (YWCAA)

La Campagne des Jeunes femmes contre le SIDA (YWCAA) est une organisation non gouvernementale enregistrée au Kenya fondée par un groupe de jeunes diplômés universitaires féminins. Le groupe qui a commencé comme un merry-go-round en 2000 avait un objectif de l’autonomisation économique grâce à la contribution de membre et la facilité de prêt pour les membres de démarrer des entreprises pour l’autonomisation économique. Il a ensuite été enregistré en Novembre 2002 en tant que Organisation à base communautaire; et comme une organisation non gouvernementale à Nairobi, au Kenya en 2004 pour répondre à la dévastation causée par le VIH / sida.

YWCAA est un organisme dirigé par des femmes. Son «la gouvernance et les opérations sont effectuées par un groupe de femmes dévoués. Le Conseil est l’organe de l’élaboration des politiques de l’organisation. Le comité de gestion est dirigé par le Directeur exécutif (ED) et est impliqué dans la mise en œuvre d’assurer la gestion et le projet est réalisé efficacement par une équipe comprenant du personnel du coordonnateur du projet, assistant de projet / agent de terrain et administratif / agente des finances. Autres membres du personnel impliqués comprennent 2 chefs d’équipe, 4 communautaires de liaison et 6 personnes bénévoles qui sont appelés quand le besoin se fait sentir.

S’il vous plaît Téléchargez ce document au sujet de l’Hommage à YWCAA[/tp]

Beijing Plus Information document

Read more about it here: HIV/AIDS Fund[/tp]

[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”] Les droits sexuels et reproductifs sont la clé capitale mais négligée dans la politique VIH / SIDA, la programmation et l’allocation des ressources. L’absence de protection des fille et de droits sexuels et reproductifs des femmes conduit à l’infection, par conséquent, l’accès aux services de santé sexuelle et reproductive, l’éducation et la protection des droits sexuels et reproductifs sont une partie essentielle de la lutte contre la pandémie.

Le rôle du HIV/AIDS Fund d’AWDF, qui a été lancé en Novembre 2005, est de fournir l’accès aux ressources pour les initiatives locales, nationales ou régionales de femmes africaines pour lutter contre la pandémie, et pour permettre aux nombreuses femmes qui sont infectées de vivre dignement et dans l’espoir. Le HIV/AIDS Fund a été lancé avec le prix de 100 000 ₤ décerné par le Sigrid Rausing Trust en 2005, qui a reconnu le directeur exécutif d’AWDF, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi pour son travail dans la promotion des droits des femmes en Afrique. Le HIV/AIDS Fund a reçu une impulsion supplémentaire lors de son lancement officiel en Novembre 2005 avec une subvention de 1 million de dollar du projet 46664 par la Nelson Mandela Foundation-.

En savoir plus à ce sujet ici: HIV/AIDS Fund[/tp]

Over the years, The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children – GAMCOTRAP has been engaged in consistent grassroots activism and social mobilisation through training and sensitization activities to raise consciousness of men and women on the Effects of FGM on the reproductive health rights of women and girl-children. The organization has worked closely with the communities through an empowerment process to be able to bring about change. As a result of the series of activities, the organisation has been able to register immense success leading to the first Public Declaration was made by 18 Circumcisers and 63 Communities to protect their children from FGM, on the 5th May 2007.

Sustained advocacy engaging the duty bearers at the community level has resulted to yet another success story. GAMCOTRAP will be marking the 2nd Dropping of the Knife event through a Public Declaration by 60 Circumcisers and 351 Communities in the Upper and Central River Regions of the Gambia.

As part of this land mark achievement, GAMCOTRAP will be organizing a great celebration to honour the ex-circumcisers and their communities on the 5th December 2009 at the Basse Stadium in the Upper River Region commencing at 9.00am. The Public Declaration has very strong support and commitment from their traditional rulers and Council of Elders as well as the Local Government Structures across the regions.

The activity will be presided over by Her Excellency, Doctor Isatou Njie-Saidy the Vice President and Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs. Also Secretaries of States and local and international dignitaries and young people will be in attendance.

October 8 was world sight day and I am wondering how many of us heard about it and for those of us who heard about it, what kind of consideration we gave to it. The second Thursday in October every year has been set aside globally for awareness creation on blindness, visual impairment and the rehabilitation of the visually impaired. This year the theme for World Sight Day 2009 was “Gender and Eye Health – equal access to care”. The theme sought to highlight the fact that globally two-thirds of the people who are blind are women and girls.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), globally about 180 million people are visually impaired, of whom 45 million are blind with nearly two-thirds of people affected by vision loss being females. 80% of all cases of blindness could have been avoided with 20% being preventable and 60% being treatable.

Visual impairment is most prevalent in women and men 50 years and older. The majority of eye conditions for this age group, such as cataract, can be easily treated. However, women who form the majority of people with visual impairment do not benefit from this treatment as a result of inequal access to eye health care. In many places men have twice the access to eye care as women due to a number of reasons including accessibility in terms of cost and distance as well as lack of the power to take decisions affecting their own lives. However equal access to eye care for women and men could greatly reduce cases of visual impairment especially in developing countries.

It is ironic that in many parts of the world women do not have equal access to eye care despite the critical role they play in health care including eye health care. Women work as ophthalmologists, ophthalmic nurses, community workers, etc. Again at home it is usually women who carry the burden of care for family members who have lost their sight. In recognition of the role of women in eye care, the World Health Organization has pointed out the need to acknowledge the role of women in the prevention of blindness and visual impairment.

The causes of avoidable blindness are frequently associated with poverty and lack of access to quality eye care services. Avoidable blindness is more common amongst the poorest of the poor, women and marginalized populations. Data shows that 90% of the world’s blind people live in developing countries and that people who live in the developing world are 5 to 10 times more likely to go blind than people who live in highly industrialized countries. Poverty therefore is a critical contributory factor to blindness.

Vision health could be maintained through improved access to health care, including regular, comprehensive dilated eye exams, which would facilitate early detection and treatment of eye diseases. Weight reduction is also a good strategy to prevent eye disease since obesity is a risk factor for diabetic eye disease.

It is therefore pertinent for women to take their health care into their own hands and seek regular medical care for all diseases that affect their lives especially their eyes. We all have a right to see this beautiful world.

Beatrice Boakye-Yiadom
Acting Grants Manager
AWDF

I could not agree more with Arun Agrawal in his paper on the Social Dimensions of Climate Change, prepared for the Social Development Department, The World Bank, Washington DC, March 5-6, 2008 in which he stated “Climate change will be pivotal in redefining development in the twenty-first century. How nations, societies, communities, and households respond to the impacts of climate changes and variability to which the world has already been committed will in many instances determine their prospects for growth, equity, and sustainability”.

People’s (poor) response to emergencies and situations in general vary and this is more so when it is around issues of poverty and livelihoods. In Africa for example, it is a daily struggle for women and girls to address food security and livelihood issues. Women largely depend on natural resources such as land and water bodies for their survival and they have adopted different coping strategies and utilized varied networking systems to survive on these resources (which are depleting at a fast rate) and yet they have little or no control over these resources.

Today, the world is confronted by another huge challenge; the impacts of climate change and unfortunately this is not receiving the attention it deserves. The international community has failed to seriously and fully address the causes and consequences of climate change, which now poses a major threat to lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty, the majority of whom are women. It is indeed incredible and unacceptable to see, hear and read daily about the damage of climate change.

Climate change is environmental change, which is also driven by humans – it is fundamentally a human problem. The impacts of climate change are expected to seriously (and disproportionately) affect the livelihoods, health, and educational opportunities of people living in poverty. Those with special burdens and/or vulnerabilities such as women, ethnic minorities, and people living with HIV/AIDS are feeling yet another pressure in global warming – one that is fundamentally unjust.

It is time for institutions, governments and individuals and indeed each and every one of us to collectively and individually work at addressing or reducing the impact of climate change on people living in poverty who mostly have not contributed to the problem.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted at the 1992 UN Summit for Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. This agreement established the “Conference of the Parties” (COP) and the “UNFCC Secretariat” as the institutional frameworks to support an international process to promote and develop relevant strategies on climate change negotiations to ensure that participating countries commit to a universal objective of reducing emissions .Similar to other international processes however, these discussions have not sufficiently articulated the gender issue as critical for mitigating climate change. This is inspite of the increasing visibility of women’s agency in critical arenas at all levels and sectors of society. Even though some gender analyses have been done, especially around Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs), the tendency has been to focus exclusively on women in developing countries . A huge gap therefore needs to be filled.

I will therefore like to recommend the following;

• A paradigm shift in the conception of economic growth and development for Africa. Dependence on western models should be transformed into context specific analysis of the real needs of different groups of women and men that builds on local knowledge and resources to promote the wellbeing and security of women and men. .

• Women’s experience and knowledge of climate change processes is critical. Their different relationships with men on natural resource issues must be acknowledged, harnessed and utilised in mitigation and adaptation measures. As well, their specific vulnerabilities must be well articulated so that appropriate responses and interventions can be made to enhance their well-being. In this regard, women’s own coping strategies in times of crises should be identified as sources of strength that could serve the basis for evolving innovative policies to strengthen their security in areas such as food, water, health, land capital and technology.

• The UN has mandated countries to promote gender equality and women’s rights in all processes of development. It is therefore important for the women’s movement in Africa to take full responsibility and ownership of the gender and climate change discourse to ensure the full implementation of UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol (KP) measures take women’s specific concerns into account. This requires that greater knowledge and awareness is crated around gender and climate change issues at all levels.

• While more work needs to be done around gender and climate change in industrialized countries, it is equally important to deepen analyses around gender equality issues and climate change in developing countries, especially Africa. This will create greater understanding about its implications for human security and promote alliance building for articulating critical priorities for women in local national, regional and international decision-making.

Nafi Chinery
Capacity Building Officer
AWDF

P.S: This post is AWDF’s contribution to Blog Action Day’s focus on Climate Change

I had a fun time yesterday on Radio Universe being interviewed by hostess Justina Agozie Yesutar with her all woman production team – Bara Yunus Khadija and Asah Daniella. The programme is appropriately dubbed “Yaa Asantewaa” (after the famous Ashanti Queen Mother who led the Ashanti’s in battle against the British in 1900.

I was impressed (but not suprised) with the dynamism, professionalism and enthusiasm of the Yaa Asantewaa Team. Yesterday’s programme was an organisational profile of AWDF and is part of a series highlighting women’s rights organisations in Ghana

(Nana with hostess Justina)

(Nana with hostess Justina and Producer Bara)

(AWDF’s Programme Officer for Fundraising & Communications, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah)

Women in Senegal are in general confined to traditional roles. They are married at a young age; half of them live in polygynous unions and are subjects to multiple childbirths. According to genderindex.org, “Up to 20% of girls undergo Female Genital Mutilation. Most women in Senegal have no educational opportunities. Only 23 percent of females over 15 years of age are literate, while the rates for males over age 15 are 43 percent.”

Additionally, discrimination against women is pervasive, especially in rural areas. The Government frequently does not enforce anti-discrimination laws.
It is against this context that the Senegalese feminist forum was held between 7th-9th August 2009. The meeting brought together 30 women from different back grounds including community based women’s representatives, women’s human rights activists, writers, film makers, lecturers and women from the development sector.

The objectives of the Forum were:

• To create an effective feminist movement in Senegal as well as a safe and autonomous space for feminist organizing.
• To discuss critical issues affecting the women’s movement in Senegal.
• To develop strategies to promote feminist leadership in women‘s organizations in Senegal and to look into how best the charter of feminist principles can be domesticated by women’s organizations in Senegal.

The Forum was held because there is a need to strengthen the feminist movement in Senegal, create feminist spaces and to put the feminist movement of the country on a solid ground. Feminists in Senegal want the women’s movement to be dynamic, the forum was to help strategize to include the youth in the feminist struggle as the leadership believes, the youth are the future and they should take up the work of fighting for women’s rights. In spite of constant struggle, Senegalese women are still oppressed by patriarchy. Patriarchy can be defined as a social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power or simply a family, community, or society based on this system or governed by men. In Senegal, patriarchy cuts across every sector of life; socially, economically and culturally. Women in Senegal are raised in a society that sees the male as the head and only occupant of a leadership position, women are taught to revere their male counter parts and always put them first. With this kind of outlook gaining access to strategic positions in the country becomes difficult. According to www. afrol.com “Senegalese law stipulates that women and men should have equal access to bank loans, but in reality women often struggle to obtain loans.” In Senegal, women are seen as second class citizens. “Senegalese law grants equal property ownership rights to men and women. Women are legally entitled to access to land, but tradition makes it impossible for them to inherit land. Similarly, women may be in a financial position to have access to property other than land, but their husbands can restrict their ability to exercise this right.”

Senegalese women are demanding and claiming their rights, organizations like Groupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Senegal(GREFELS )and Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) are leading the way by supporting to increase the autonomy of women and linking them with feminist and progressive groups, to build a powerful African women’s movement linking human rights to the theory and practice of development and to bring forth African Women’s contribution to sustainable and democratic development. The Senegalese feminist Forum sought to re-echo the voices of these women. During the meeting challenges of the feminist movement in Senegal was bought to the fore. A key challenge is the issue of religious fundamentalism. The religious system of Senegal hinders women from being bold enough to express them selves and their views.

Another challenge that came up during the meeting was the inability of people or women to affirm that they are feminist. Women identifying them selves as feminists is a challenge in Senegal, according to Marjorie Mbilinyi, board member of Tanzania Gender Networking Programme “feminist are fine with the feminist struggle as long as there is no struggle” these women do not want to own their identity as feminist, they do not own the challenges, threats, difficulty and opportunity that goes along with owning an identity as a feminist.

In solidarity, the AWDF funded the forum with a grant of US$20,000. The AWDF made a presentation on the charter of feminist principles. The charter serves as an accountability mechanism for feminist organizing on the continent and is a tool for peer review amongst African feminist organizations.

The general belief behind the African Feminist Forum is to create an autonomous space for feminists with no, ”ifs”, “buts” and “however”. The Senegalese feminist forum provided a safe space for feminists in Senegal to dream and do things differently by creating an autonomous space for Senegalese feminist, to domesticate the charter of principles in Senegal, to have a body of knowledge reflecting feminist agency that can be shared with feminist s around the region.

Thelma Owusu-Boakye (Programme Assistant, Fundraising & Communications)
with Rissi Assani-Alabi (Programme Officer, Francophone Programme Officer)

My mother was a kitchen girl, kitchen girl…
My father was a garden boy, garden boy…
That’s why I’m a feminist, feminist…
That’s why I’m a feminist, feminist…

(Song sung by Siphiwe Hlope, Executive Director of Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL) at the CEO Forum in Kampala, Uganda)

The women are coming, around the corner
The women are coming, around the corner
Bisi is coming, around the corner
Usu is coming, around the corner

(Song sung by Siphiwe Hlope, Executive Director of Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL) at the CEO Forum in Kampala, Uganda)

[tp lang=”en”not_in=”fr”]Book Launch: “Gender Budgeting as a Tool for Poverty Reduction”

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) in partnership with the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) is pleased to announce the launch of a research book “Gender Budgeting As A Tool For Poverty Reduction” (more…)