Partner: UN Women
Year of Implementation: 2015
Believing in the power of youth to develop communities, Etijah planned for this project that aimed to create a coalition of youth who could act as advocates for women rights in their local communities. This was built on the well-established network of youth ambassadors who have been volunteering in the Youth Citizenship Ambassadors Group to be change agents and valuable assets in their local communities. The project was a good opportunity to utilize the improved networking and advocacy skills of youth who are passionate about serving the national women agenda. Given that Egypt was at a turning point during that time, it was convenient to join forces and try to face some of the issues of marginalized women.
It was, thus, essential to identify the key obstacles against increasing women’s participation in the civic society and ensure that women receive their basic citizenship rights. These obstacles stem from different cultural, social, economic and political reasons.
The project trained 200 young leaders at 5 local governorates: Aswan, Qena, Red Sea, Menya and Beheira on development workshops designing and the technicalities of coalition building, resources management for holding local initiatives, collective advocacy and communication strategies, building synergies among coalition members, and building strategy for the coalition.
Following these trainings, a coalition of young trained leaders was formed, where they started advocating for the national women agenda at their governorates. They were able to design and implement different awareness campaigns concerning empowering women and helping them access their rights on a local community level. This has reached over 6000 persons.