Young women encounter challenges everyday. Apart from sharing their communities’ struggles over limited resources like water, land or jobs, many systematically face discrimination simply by virtue of being female. This includes physical and sexual violence, being kept out of school, disproportionate vulnerability to HIV infection and lack of access to property and other rights.

Yet young women around the globe possess the collective power to change their lives, their communities and the world we live in. Just as they face daily challenges, young women are continually developing innovative, effective ways to improve their lives. By bringing together their wisdom and creativity, young women are leading change. Understanding that investing in young women’s leadership is essential to social change now and for the future, the World YWCA with the generous support of UNFPA, has developed this training resource for and by young women.

Empowering Young Women to Lead Change is designed to support the development of young women’s skills and to enable them to provide leadership on the issues that concern them. It offers engaging and dynamic activities to motivate and enable young women to believe in their abilities to catalyse change and to mobilise others to do the same. It is a flexible tool for learning and exploring issues from human rights and violence against women to body image, self-esteem and developing leadership skills. Young women in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America in five workshops have field-tested this manual.

Download this PDF document here in:

English , Français , Español

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The World YWCA unites national associations in a worldwide women’s volunteer membership movement. Inspired by the Christian faith, the purpose of the World YWCA is to develop the leadership and collective power of women and girls around the world to achieve human rights, health, security, dignity, freedom, justice and peace for all people.

UNFPA , the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity.