WEL seeks to increase the number of women in leadership, in decision making, and meaningful representations in political and developmental platforms. Strategies include building Partnerships and Collaborations, Create a pool of Locally led women movements, Capacity Development in Advocacy, Research, Analysis, Media Engagement and Civic Education.
Young Women’s Leadership in Governance and Political Processes in Kenya.
The project will realize women’s participation in local decision-making processes in three counties, Nakuru, Kitui and Homabay, in Kenya. The project will identify 780 women who will form self-help groups and conduct awareness raising activities on women’s participation, social audits, and public forums with duty bearers. The project also empowers newly elected female members of county assemblies and raise awareness of implementing the rule which requires not more than the 2/3 of representatives are from the same gender. This project is being implemented in partnership with the United Nations Democratic Fund (UNDEF).
Advancing Equality Through Human Rights Education (AHERE)
The AHERE project in Kenya focuses on increasing participation of women and girls aimed at contributing their empowerment for the advancement of gender equality in their communities. Guided by a Human-rigths based approach with a gender perspective, the project will provide human rights training, coaching and after capacity building activities. The project will further support implementation of community mobilization, action and development of alliances among human rights and women’s organizations to influence duty bearers in Kenya.
The Advancing Equality through Human Rights Education (AEHRE) project is a global project implemented in five countries (Burkina Faso, Haiti, Kenya, Senegal and Tanzania) over a period of five years (2019-2024). The ultimate outcome of the project is to increase the empowerment of women and girls for the advancement of gender equality in their communities. The AEHRE project in Kenya runs in four sub-counties: Bomet Central, Sotik, Nakuru East and Nakuru West and focuses on promoting women’s right to participate in local decision-making structures. The project is being implemented in partnership with Equitas and funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affaire Canada.
Strengthening the SDGs Kenya Forum as an accountability for Gender and Development
Training Programme for Gender Committee/Champions Among Smallholder Tea Farmers Through statements, position papers, community accountability forums and dialogues, impact stories, meetings, evaluations and monitoring reports, county award schemes, the project seeks to hold government accountable in the promotion, planning, financing and implementation of SDG's and gender equality priorities in 6 counties; Nakuru, Bomet, Kitui, Kisumu, Kilifi, and Kajiado. The project is funded through SDGs Forum.
WEL in Partnership with Bread for the World
Women leaders are now actively participating in and having influence over decision-making processes at both the community and County level. Women leaders are taking action to participate in County government decision-making processes (legislation, policy making, budgeting). Also, women leaders now have increased confidence to participate in decision-making processes that affect their lives in the House Hold and the community level. The County government authorities are increasingly taking action to develop, adopt or operationalize laws, policies and budgeted strategies that support women to participate in decision making processes in the House Hold level and the public sphere. Community members, in particular men and boys, are becoming change agents and actively support women to participate in decision making processes. They are actively supporting women's participation in decision-making and economic empowerment, and demand action from government officials and duty bearers.
WEL has strengthened capacity of the women Self Help groups (SHGs), community members and county governments of Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa, Embu, Nairobi, Bungoma and Baringo to spearhead efforts to prevent and respond to domestic violence using the SASA methodology. Recognizing the links between poverty and GBV, one of the components of the programme is to engage women survivors of GBV who are members of the SHGs in financial education and the development their financial literacy skills. Through the programme, WEL has managed to work and link over 600 women and youthful survivors of GBV to access financial and non-financial services to support their economic empowerment. Our trainings to the GBV survivors mainly focuses on the individual and groups financial education skills and on small business management skills.
WEL in Partnership with National Democratic Institute (NDI/USAID)
WEL has been implementing a leadership programme for women funded by National
Democratic Institute (NDI) using their tools (training manuals) and best practices in
international democratic development that were adapted to the needs of our country (Kenya).
With the support of NDI, WEL successfully modified the training program for women to
increase their participation in decision making in Kenya. The contents of the adapted materials
(manuals and the accompanying modules) were reviewed and modified as appropriate to suit the country’s context and experience levels of participants.
The materials were adapted into an accessible set of tools that were successfully used in the
leadership training program for women as candidates, voters, activists and political party
members. Through the training programme, WEL directly reached 5360 women in 13 counties
and over 16, 000 community members indirectly in 2017.
Women Leaders are bringing on board male engagement strategy. County women legislatures
have influenced their male counterparts to support their planned out work plans at the county
through pushing bills and budget distribution that are geared towards gender equality.