Women and Leadership Program (WLP)
Strengthening Women’s Voice, Leadership, and Participation
Overview
Launched with FOWODE’s founding in 1995, the Women and Leadership Programme (WLP) is FOWODE’s flagship initiative. We are building a critical mass of bold, value driven women leaders with skills, knowledge, and networks to transform public policy and decision-making. FOWODE invests in building a pipeline of young transformative women leaders across all sectors to contribute towards forging a sustainable feminist movement.
FOWODE remains a key player in the women’s movement and is part of a history that opened the way for thousands of women to have a voice in the public arena. We have enhanced the capacities of over 30,000 women leaders to challenge subtle but engrained systems of oppression, leading to increased gender responsive policies, laws and budgets.
WHAT WE DO
Nurture Bold Women Leaders Committed to Gender Transformative Action
FOWODE is reimagining women’s empowerment and decolonizing feminist leadership, by nurturing women leaders that push for localised gender transformative policies.
We are building a critical mass of bold, value-driven and transformative women leaders through enhancing their capacities for effective campaign management, legislative engagement and gender responsive policy influence.
To identify and support these aspiring leaders, we forge strategic partnerships with organized women’s groups, political parties, and like-minded organizations. This collaborative network ensures we can guide and bolster women throughout every stage of their leadership journey.
Check out our Elections’ Resource Centre for Women – https://fowode.org/leaderhership-hub/
FOWODE acknowledges that economic empowerment is a key catalyst to women’s effective participation in decision making and therefore prioritises initiatives that enhance women’s resources.
Our commitment is built on a legacy of institutional impact. As the architects of the women’s caucus model in Uganda, FOWODE continues to champion this collective approach to power. We actively support the formation of caucuses at the local council level and maintain a close partnership with the national women’s caucus in Parliament – the Uganda Parliamentary Women Association (UWOPA), ensuring our mission for gender-transformative action resonates from the grassroots to the highest halls of power.
Mentor for Alternative and Transformative Leadership
We believe that it is critical to create a new generation of leaders with the ability to confidently advance gender equality, social justice and to shape agendas. Since 2004, FOWODE has been unapologetically disrupting barriers and has nurtured a new generation of over 1000 bold and value-driven feminist trailblazers through our Alternative and Transformative Leadership Camps.
We are igniting a powerful collective of young leaders and gender justice champions who dare to disrupt the status quo, amplify marginalized voices, and dismantle systems of inequality.
Through this revolutionary mentorship, FOWODE equips young visionaries with the tools to centre individual wellbeing and mental health, champion women’s rights, demand accountability, and reimagine leadership that centers the most vulnerable.
From university activism to parliamentary halls, FOWODE alumni are rewriting Uganda’s future. Our unstoppable alumni are now driving progress in politics, business, academia, and grassroots communities. Majority of the alumni are the policymakers challenging sexist norms, the entrepreneurs uplifting marginalized women, and the community organizers turning advocacy into action.
Check out some our alumni stories here: https://fowode.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/THE-GIRL-BRAND.pdf
FOWODE Young Leaders Alumni Association (FYLAA)
To connect, coordinate and strengthen intergenerational mentorship of trainees across the years, the alumni formed the FOWODE Young Leaders Alumni Association (FYLAA). The Association envisions
“A transformed society where women and men uphold the ideals of social justice and gender equality”.
FYLAA’s mission is to build a strong cadre of young leaders who promote gender equality and social justice through capacity building, advocacy, networking and research. It has become movement where pro-women and pro-poor values aren’t just ideals, but the bedrock of transformative change in communities.
Boost Civic Engagement for Gender Equality
FOWODE ignites civic power to nurture a supportive environment for women to thrive in leadership. We engage communities to address patriarchal cultural and traditional stereotypes that inhibit women from achieving their full potential.
Through multimedia campaigns and community networks, we fuel feminist consciousness and activism which has accelerated women’s agency and leadership. To reawaken citizen’s voice and demand for gender responsive governance, FOWODE curates community spaces with organised and informal citizen formations. These spaces have contributed to strengthening democratic processes that centre women’s voice.
Through the Gender Leadership Clubs in schools, we work closely with senior women and men teachers to nurture young girls and boys into champions gender equality.