With Support from Norway, The National Transformational Leadership in partnership with UN Women and Ministry of Gender Child and Social Welfare organized 5 days tailor made mentorship training for women leaders. The training took place from 12th to 16th December 2022 at Regency Hotel in Juba. It brought together 30 women members of various political parties and members of Parliament from national and Central Equatoria State Assembly namely, UDF, SPLM-IO, OPP and SPLM.
The overall objective of a tailor-made mentorship training was to create awareness on civic issues and strengthen skills on transformational leadership, peacebuilding, constitutional process making process and implementation of the R-ARCSS road map.
The discussions and presentations enhanced the understanding of the role of women in leadership and key attributes needed for transformative leaders. In particular, knowledge and capacity was raised on how to engage various women’s group to advocate for their rights provided in the R-ARCSS and constitutions.
There was improved knowledge on the steps for Permanent Constitution and how women should organize themselves to lobby for inclusion of laws banning harmful traditional practices and how to engage their political parties in supporting the gender agenda. Actions plans with activities brining different parties together irrespective of their political colors were developed to forge strong partnership. These include organizing women peacebuilding rallies, intergenerational dialogues, training of women in parliamentary procedures and motion building.
As they prepare for elections, participants requested for increased awareness raising on civic education, media engagement, capacity building in conducting campaign, mobilizing resources and short courses in English language to improve their public speaking. They also requested the MGCSW to organize meeting with the executive levels and various women groups to unite and narrow their gaps; Advocate for parties to nominate competent women into various committees (Revitalized National Constitutional Review Committee (R-NCRC), Constitutional Drafting Committee (CDC), Preparatory Committee (PC) National Conference Committee (NCC); Coordinate with women in other political parties to get consensus on governance issues; Support collection of women’s views on contentious constitutional issues; Support the preparation for formal submission to the R-NCRC and establish women task force to oversee stages of the permanent constitution making process.