Young women's engagement and mentoring in politics and decision-making spheres : a community of practice; final technical report

Abstract

In a context where women, and in particular young women, remain systematically under represented in political office and decision-making instances both in Ghana and Canada, this project focused on deepening our understanding of and increasing our knowledge around engagement and mentoring initiatives promoting young women’s leadership and empowerment. We conducted this project through the piloting of a global Community of Practice that brought together a dozen core participants from ten civil society organizations from Ghana and Canada. We uncovered the need for our institutions to build our capacity to design and implement quality, flexible and innovative engagement and mentoring initiatives that address cultural norms and systemic barriers that impede young women’s participation in their communities or society at large. We found that having different perspectives to address common challenges led to greater analysis of existing challenges as well as pathways to be explored that could offer solutions. This pilot project contributed to connecting leading organizations working towards greater representation and participation of young women in the public sphere who have decided to continue working together using the Community of Practice as an anchor for further collaborations.