The Second Feminist Leadership and Movement Building Institute
East Africa
10 – 15 April 2010
Kampala, Uganda

Applications are due on or before 12 February 2010.

You can visit www.creaworld.org  for brochure and application form.

The  Second Feminist Leadership and Movement Building Institute is a week-long course designed  to strengthen feminist leadership, strategies and collective power for social transformation in Africa. The Institute which will take place in Kampala, Uganda from 10 – 15 April 2010, and is the second institute convened by CREA and Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA). The first institute took place in Entebbe, Uganda in 2008.
 

About the Institute
The institute will combine reflection on the current political landscape as well as past organizing strategies for women’s rights in Africa by using a trans-movement building approach. Looking at diverse movements in Africa and globally, participants will be able to relate some of the experiences and lessons from these movements to their own contexts, countries, and regions.
The movement building approach challenges groups to critically assess how they have organized themselves to achieve their social justice goals.  In particular it enables participants to explore their political agenda, involvement of constituents and strategies for collective action underpinned by reflection. 

Using a movement building lens, the process will allow participants to build their knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of movement building synthesized from analyses of global movements.  Additionally, participants will identify the different intersections, interactions, common spaces and challenges that social movements encounter when collaborating on issues of women’s human rights. From this, they will critically assess pre-existing resources of the women’s movement in Africa and identify and explore concrete strategies to strengthen links between movements to advance women’s human rights more collectively.  The institute will cover the following topics:

Social Movements and Power: Concepts and Theory
Movements, Organisations and Leadership
Introduction to Women’s Rights and Feminist Movements in Africa
Assessing our impact: Approaches and Tools

The institute will foreground reflection at the personal and institutional level that will both enable and challenge participants to strengthen their leadership skills and strategies to effect real change for women’s rights and social justice in Africa. 
Activists and academics from the global South will teach the course using classroom instruction, group work, case studies, simulation exercises and films. Resource persons will include Srilatha Batliwala (India) and African feminists such as Solome Kimbugwe (Uganda) and Zaynab El Sawi (Sudan) among others.
 

Participants

 

To participate you must:
Be a woman between 25 and 45 years of age;
Reside or work in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Burundi and Rwanda);
Have a minimum of 3 years experience working on gender issues, women’s rights, development and/or youth activism (voluntary or employment);
Be able to demonstrate how you will use what you learn at the Institute in your work and how you will continue to participate in follow-up activities;
Have a working knowledge of the English language and/or be bilingual if French speaking.
 

Cost
Tuition, accommodation and meals for the duration of the Institute will be covered by the organizers. Participants will be required to pay a registration fee of US$50. Participants must cover their own travel expenses. A limited number of travel scholarships are available on a need basis.
 

Organizers

CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action) is a feminist human rights organization based in New Delhi, India, and led by women from the global South. CREA promotes, protects, and advances women’s human rights and the sexual rights of all people by building leadership capacities; strengthening organizations and social movements; creating new information, knowledge, and resources; and influencing social and policy environments. CREA envisions a just world, free of poverty, violence, discrimination, and inequality, where the human rights of all people–especially women, young people, and sexual minorities―are realized.

Based in Uganda, Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) is a Pan-African International Development NGO providing solidarity, support, awareness and training to African women in order to influence policy and decision-making.  AMwA also provides a research forum on African women’s issues and actively supports movement building in Africa.  AMwA also co-ordinates an African Women’s Leadership Institute (AWLI) that provides training for African Women aged 25-45 years in critical strategic thinking on feminist praxis and analysis at personal, organizational and movement levels. The goal of the AWLI is to encourage and train significant numbers of young women for leadership positions that will ultimately promote a progressive African women’s development agenda.  In addition to the AWLI, AMwA provides strategic and programmatic support to members of the AWLI alumni network.
Applications are due on or before 12 February 2010. Applications received after the due date will not be considered. Please send your applications to Sushma Luthra at sluthra@creaworld.org or fax to +91 11 2437 7708.

blogger’s note: I’ll see you there, inshallah(t).  🙂