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Last week at a Glance - Issue 56
Women's Coalition
February 28, 2011

It is that time of the year again when women all over the world celebrate International Women's Day. Women's rights organizations are preparing for this day. This year's celebrations are special as they mark the Centenary (100 years) celebrations the first IWD was observed on the 19 March 1911 in Germany.

Each year has its own theme and this year's global theme is "Equal Access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women."

IWD is celebrated on the 8th of March every year, some of the organisatons that are commemorating IWD are Zimbabwe Women Writers and WCoZ Chapters.

Peace Building Project

On Thursday 24 February, WCoZ in collaboration with Institute for Security Studies (ISS) convened a brief meeting to set up a national working group on Gender, Peace and Security under the SADC Gender Protocol Alliance. More than 15 representatives from key women`s organisations working on peacebuilding attended the meeting

The objectives of the meeting were to consolidate the key organisations working on gender and peacebuilding; identify key priorities that the national working group would focus on and come up with the provisional time frame for another broad meeting to refine the terms of reference for the national working group.

WCoZ is the national focal point for the SADC Gender Protocol Alliance and has been actively engaged in mobilizing key organisations in developing a national working group on Gender, Peace and security in Zimbabwe.

Advisory Steering Committee Meeting

Five members of the Advisory Steering Committee and four WCoZ Secretariat staff members met on Thursday 24 February 2011 to refine the Terms of Reference for the Advisory Forum. During the meeting the members defined the mandate for the Forum as think tank that would process, analyse and evaluate proposed issued that pressing in the women`s movement.

The meeting also identified 4 key issues that would kick start the Forum; facilitating and advising on documentation of the past rich experiences; mentoring through the cross generational linkages; mediation of governance issues and capacity building through mentoring and coaching.

The Steering Committee also discussed the structure of the Forum in which the committee is the nucleus of the forum and the forum will be composed of experts in women's rights issues drawn from the WCoZ Clusters namely; Gender based violence, Health, Education, Politics and decision making, Peace building and Conflict Resolution, legal and constitutional affairs, Culture, media and ICT, Economic empowerment and environment.

Young Women's Steering Committee Meeting

The Young Women's Forum Steering Committee met on Friday 25 February 2011 at the WCoZ offices to polish the its objective, eligibility, structure of the committee and the terms of reference. As part of the meeting the members of the committee identified the gaps between generations and would seek mentorship programmes from the advisory forum.

The objective of the Forum is to create a space for a collective young voice for a stronger movement building that guarantees sisterhood and will be open to women aged between 19 - 30 years. The values of the forum include: non-partisan discussions; democracy development, equality, non discrimination, sisterhood, integrity, honesty and accountability. In the next meeting the committee will come up with a Code of Conduct for the Forum.

Visit the Women's Coalition fact sheet

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