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Our Goals
Feminist Leadership and Digital Inclusion
At the of the institute for Young Women Development is the unwavering belief that transformative change is driven by transformative leaders and communities.
We are committed to building the agency, voice, and consciousness of young women across Zimbabwe. We move beyond traditional leadership training to cultivate a deep understanding of feminist principles, focusing on collective power, social justice, and building transformative societies centred on equality. Our primary tools are the Transformative Feminist Leadership Schools (TFLS) and facilitating access to Digital Skills and Technologies. Our Transformative Leadership Schools offer an intensive program for strengthening young women’s feminist leadership skills and practical knowledge on Economic Inclusion and Environmental Care and Wellbeing. It also facilitates knowledge on community organising and policy advocacy. We also prioritise feminist knowledge production, creating and disseminating research and resources that are grounded in the lived realities of the young women we serve.
Digital Skills and Technologies facilitate young women’s knowledge, skills and access to digital spaces and tools. In a world where young women voices and agency are shadowed by algorithmic narratives, digital inclusion is a fundamental necessity. It does not only amplify young women’s transformational stories. It also significantly facilitates exchange of good practices in economic and environmental inclusion. It has specifically transformed young women’s knowledge and skills on agricultural and food value chains, and just-climate-resilience and energy transitions. To date IYWD has facilitated more than 100 young women and girls with knowledge and skills on the use of digital technologies, access and sharing of information.
The impact is clear: graduates from our programs are not just passive participants but active agents of change. For example, many have gone on to successfully lead in community development committees, school boards, clinic committees and even local councils and parliament, demonstrating a direct pathway from our training to tangible community leadership. This pillar ensures that a powerful, conscious, and prepared generation of young women is ready to lead.
Our digital technologies graduates have improved access and usage of digital technologies, ensuring that young women are not left behind and also harness its benefits. For example young women involved in agriculture and food value chains have unlocked the value of accessing early warnings on weather patterns, informing early responses for their agricultural activities to build resilience.
Feminist Economics and Sustainable Livelihoods
We believe that economic independence is a cornerstone of women’s freedom and agency.
We strengthen young women’s agency and leadership in fostering sustainable livelihoods and building a more just economic future moving them from positions of marginalisation to economic leadership. Our approach is hands-on, promoting young women ’s knowledge, skills and resources sharing in agriculture and food value chains. Our understanding of the now moment requires young women and women’s economic autonomy, and leadership in sustainable food systems and agricultural value chains. This enhances their food security and also expands access to markets for their produce. To support this, we organise Seed Fairs, vibrant community spaces where young women exchange, sell and promote indigenous, climate-resilient seeds. They also share skills, knowledge and good practices for organic seeds preservation to maintain local biodiversity.
This pillar is complemented by our highly effective Women’s Business Bootcamps. These provide young women small scale farmers and aspiring entrepreneurs with essential skills in financial literacy, business planning, marketing and digital technologies. This is coupled with crucial mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities. We connect young women with prominent business leaders, creating invaluable networks for markets and support.
By facilitating local skills, knowledge and resources sharing among marginalised young women, they have secured their household food and expanded their incomes. This has enabled them to attain economic autonomy, support their families, and challenge economic and patriarchal systems that have historically left them behind.
Environmental Care and Wellbeing
The climate crisis disproportionately affects women, particularly those in rural communities who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
We raise consciousness on climate change, strengthening young women’s leadership and innovation in just-climate-resilience and environmental stewardship. Our approach to just-community-resilience promotes both ecological health and personal wellbeing. This has meant promoting young women-led green energy transitions to solar in marginalised communities. Policy discussions on green energy transitions have remained high level, excluding communities. Yet young women have the transformative power to promote community-led clean energy transition in ways that impact their daily lives. Through shifting to solar energy for lighting and gadgets charging, young women homes and communities have become safer; and this has had ripple effects on access to digital platforms and more lighting time.
While building on shifts towards green energy, firewood consumption has remained high for cooking and heat energy. To mitigate against uncontrolled deforestation for firewood, we promote tree-planting and sustainable woodlots at young women’s homesteads. Sustainable Woodlots have largely contributed to shifting the burden of unpaid care and domestic work that women face in walking long distances to fetch firewood. By combining green energy transition, sustainable woodlots and agriculture and food value chains, we are promoting ‘Sustainable Homes’ as a holistic model for food security and environmental care. This has not only contributed to building sustainable futures, but reinforces the crucial role of young women as community leaders and innovators.
Alliance Building and Policy Advocacy
Meaningful change requires a seat at the table where decisions are made.
We recognize that for young women to thrive, the entire community ecosystem should be receptive. Therefore, we build alliances with other organisations that share the same vision of ensuring that ‘every young woman and woman has her right of way’.
At community level, we convene and lead collaborative community organising work of the Alliance of Community based Organisations (ACBOs). This a platform that brings together 43 community based organisations (CBOs) from across Zimbabwe’s 8 rural provinces. The goal of the Alliance is to strengthen collective community organising and policy advocacy for greater community impact.
We also intentionally focus on dismantling barriers that exclude young women from governance and public life, ensuring their voices are heard from village level to the national stage. We facilitate transformative leadership not only to young women but also to key stakeholders, including local community leadership such as traditional leaders, local government councils, sensitising them on women’s rights. We also carry out policy advocacy, hold leaders and governance institutions accountable on young women’s rights.
Our approach yields concrete results. For example, after our engagement in Gokwe, the local council prioritized and built a much-needed maternity clinic. In Bindura Municipality, our advocacy led to improved sanitation and increased water provision, directly reducing the burden on women. Our work with traditional leaders has been equally impactful, with several paramount chiefs establishing paralegal roles for young women in their traditional courts to ensure fair representation. On a national scale, our influence is evident in our co-creation of the Model Gender Equality Bill in 2020, a landmark policy document that was subsequently tabled in Cabinet, proving that our grassroots work can effectively inform and shape national policy.