Partner Focus: Jordan and Zimbabwe

At the Women’s Learning Partnership, we consider our greatest achievement to be the solidarity, strength, and dynamism of our Partnership based on relationships of trust, respect, and cooperation. Our shared vision, nurtured through six years of collaborative effort and sustained communication, has enabled 18 autonomous national and regional organizations on four continents, working in 17 languages, and functioning under diverse conditions, to work closely together, thereby significantly increasing our impact on the struggle to secure justice and equality for women. The partners inspire each other, learn from one another, and provide support and solidarity in our human rights advocacy. In this issue we spotlight our partners in Jordan and Zimbabwe.

Jordan

WLP partner Sisterhood Is Global Institute/Jordan (SIGI/J) is working to empower women through leadership training, human rights education, and skills-building in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Their work has created enthusiasm and synergy among the grassroots population. The SIGI/J website, one of the leading Arabic internet resources in the region, receives about 12,000 visitors a day and provides information about women's rights and combating violence against women. Extremists have recently targeted SIGI/J, opposing their efforts to advance women's rights. The website was hacked three successive times within a period of one month, bringing down the site. A fundamentalist group posted on the homepage, "In the name of God we destroy and hack this website." Amidst rising religious fundamentalism and extremism, women's rights activists in Jordan continue to fight the good fight. In the last three months, SIGI/J has held five ICT training workshops, a national leadership training institute, a human rights education workshop, and a community partnership for women's empowerment workshop, which together trained 150 women.

Founded in 1998 by lawyers, jurists, and human rights activists, SIGI/J works to support and promote women's rights through education, skills training, and modern technology. Its programs include the Human Rights Education Program based on the Arabic adaptation of the training manual Claiming Our Rights, co-authored by Mahnaz Afkhami. This program, which targets school administrators, counselors, and parents, aims to integrate human rights issues and participatory leadership into school curricula. Other SIGI/J programs are Combating Violence Against Women and Girls Program based on the Arabic adaptation of the training manual Safe and Secure; the Knowledge Partnership Program, which provides Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training; and the Cultural Events Program which highlights the experiences of women leaders. In addition, WLP Jordan, SIGI/J, is spearheading the partnership’s new initiative entitled Young Women’s Learning Partnership (YWLP) in order to reach the next generation of women leaders at an early age.

Women who attended the IT training workshops in Jordan learned to create websites, brochures, and posters, and electronically share photographs in order to mobilize support for women’s rights, focusing especially on combating violence against women.

As part of the community partnership for women's empowerment workshop, SIGI/J formed a coalition of twenty civil society organizations and initiated a multipart workshop to impart skills training in human rights, democracy and civic education, gender mainstreaming, and management.

Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, women's organizations are dealing with a complex humanitarian situation in a devastated economy. Hyperinflation exceeds 1,700%, leaving 8 in 10 citizens destitute. Recently, civil society groups peacefully protesting government policies were silenced through brute force and imprisonment.

Women’s Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM), a non-governmental organization founded in 2001, are focusing their work on helping constituents, including women in the informal sector and in refugee camps to find solutions to urgent problems such as loss of livelihoods and income, as they continue their regular activities.

WSPM focuses on two main projects: women's leadership training workshops and ICT skill-building trainings. The leadership trainings empower economically and socially disadvantaged women and girls and enable them to see their own potential as leaders in their community and beyond. The long term goals of the workshops are to promote gender equality and to encourage women to play a larger role in democracy-building, and in creating a more horizontal, participatory political process.

The leadership training program also incorporates conflict resolution and peace building skills for women and girls from communities affected by war and conflict. Many women living in refugee camps are more susceptible to HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases, as well as sexual abuse.

Mrs. Esther Bokyo, a 50 year old woman from Tanzania, attended one of the WSPM Leading to Choices workshops last year. She received her two year certificate in Adult education and is the mother of seven children and several grand children. Mrs. Bokyo explained that before the Workshop, she could not believe that an uneducated or an ordinary woman could be a leader. However, after the Workshop she gained self-esteem and argued that a successful leadership training program should focus on empowering those who live in ignorance. “I have been living in a deep sleep but today this workshop has awakened me. I wish I were 15 years old,” Mrs. Boyko exclaimed.