On January 12th, 2013 , 18 young women between the ages of 20-28 gathered at our residence in Abidjan for the 1st Young Women’s Leadership Cafe, which IEWAD collaborated with the CIVED and POWER, Inc. Professor Anna Manouan is the Executive Director of CIVED and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Abidjan-Cocody was the co-lead. Two co-facilitators from the group, Monqiue Gbahi and Awa Diakite established the 4 themes which the groups to discuss.
The themes determined for the day included: problems related to gender (as woman), professional experience, barriers to funding projects, and sexual harassment. There were four working groups which spent 20-30 minutes discussing the themes in rotation. At the end of the program, each of the group had a reporter who provided a summary of all of the groups’ discussions. Professor Manouan gave closing remarks and helped to bridge the findings across the 4 groups. We concluded with a performance by one of the participants, an extremely talented singer; who was then joined in by the others in singing and dancing. The summary report available in English and French is being used to guide the strategic plan for IEWAD for future programs and initiatives.
We hope this will be the first of many more collaborations with other non-governmental organizations in Cote d’Ivoire including the Center for the Promotion of Human Rights and Development in Africa (CPHDA) and the Centre Feminin pour la Democratie et les Droits Humaines en Cote d’Ivoire (CEFCI).
The themes determined for the day included: problems related to gender (as woman), professional experience, barriers to funding projects, and sexual harassment. There were four working groups which spent 20-30 minutes discussing the themes in rotation. At the end of the program, each of the group had a reporter who provided a summary of all of the groups’ discussions. Professor Manouan gave closing remarks and helped to bridge the findings across the 4 groups. We concluded with a performance by one of the participants, an extremely talented singer; who was then joined in by the others in singing and dancing. The summary report available in English and French is being used to guide the strategic plan for IEWAD for future programs and initiatives.
We hope this will be the first of many more collaborations with other non-governmental organizations in Cote d’Ivoire including the Center for the Promotion of Human Rights and Development in Africa (CPHDA) and the Centre Feminin pour la Democratie et les Droits Humaines en Cote d’Ivoire (CEFCI).