Young Women's Dialogue Recruitment 2013

Date Released: Tue, 6 November 2012 13:57 +0200

Purpose:

Young Women's Dialogue (YWD) is a sub-programme of Pan African Youth Dialogue (PAYD), a non-profit organisation that seeks to engage young people in promoting the rebirth of Africa, participating in its governance and inculcating ethical and responsible leadership. With these underlying values, YWD aims to encourage young women to communicate about the issues that affect their existence and function in society, to raise awareness of available opportunities, to express, share and/or form new world views. Thus, to encourage them to take a proactive stance in participating in society, as well as to work towards pragmatic solutions for the issues they face or, most importantly, to stimulate thinking that asks the right questions, whether through dialogue or other avenues such as writing. In many ways, the YWD provides a platform and tools that will allow young women empower themselves and optimise their potential.

The YWD targets two groups of women in their youth, namely teenage women in high school and students in university. Although the purpose of this initiative is directed to both groups, it is taken into account that these groups of young women remain distinct on account of their contexts and needs – relative to their stages of development. Thus, with respect to these distinctions, different approaches appropriate for each group are taken in order to achieve the same objective. This is reflected in the different programmes of the YWD.

Programmes of the Young Women’s Dialogue:

Community YWD:             

Engagement with the young teenage women of the Grahamstown Community, who are still in high school. Majority of the participants are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

• Weekly Workshops
• Leadership Camp: June 2013
• Annual YWD Conference: August 2013
• On-going dialogue on social media platforms

Campus YWD:

Engagement with young women at Rhodes University; an educated group already equipped with knowledge and skills of critical thinking about the world around them and their relation to it. The task is to create a space in which women use this resource in an empowering way with regards to gender issues. 

• Weekly Gender Dialogues
• Periodic Focus Groups, Seminars and Panel Discussions
• Annual Lecture
• On-going dialogue on social media platforms

YWD Thought Leadership:

Critical engagement with our practices and related theory. This will also involve creating an archive of writings that will be about YWD activities and related issues in the broader community, national and international context, with the aim to inform, analyse and criticise. This will involve participation from the public and make use of various social media.

Committee Roles:

• Chairperson (Occupied)
• Project Co-ordinatiors

1. Community YWD
2. Campus  YWD (Occupied)
3. Thought Leadership

• Secretary
• Operations Officer
• Media and Communications
• Treasurer