AWDF Publications

BIRTHING LEADERS: STORIES OF CHANGE IN AFRICAN WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS

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he Leadership and Governance programme is based on our knowledge of the persistent challenges of African women’s organisations with issues related to resource mobilisation, communications, governance, leadership transition, safety and wellbeing. Given funding constraints and the external context that African women’s organisations work in, many  tend to focus on narrow short-term advocacy or urgent service-delivery projects, with little capacity to expand alliances, envision innovative strategies, grow their organisations and implement forward thinking.
The Leadership and Governance programme focuses on investment in two areas. The first is in strengthening the institutional and governance structures and systems of participating organisations, including organisational capacity assessments and support to governing boards. We also chose to include one-on-one coaching as a means of making a concentrated investment in developing individual and collective leadership skills. We intentionally chose to coach both the Executive Director/CEOs and a staff member in second level management in each organisation, as a way to strengthen the leadership pipeline.
Through this we worked to build the leadership skills of women leaders themselves, and enhance their understanding of feminism, human rights, and movement building, along with creative ways of thinking about management and governance. 
The African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) was established in 2000, as an Africa-wide philanthropic, grant making initiative to support the realisation and fulfilment of African women’s rights through funding of autonomous women’s organisations on the continent. Building the capacity of African women’s organisations is one pillar of this commitment to resourcing women-led transformation in Africa
In 2015 the AWDF Capacity Building Unit began the Leadership and Governance programme - a pilot designed to nurture and support the evolution of a cadre of African feminist leaders by supporting them to grow, develop, and bring about changes in the world through their organisations. It combines direct technical support and grants for organisational change with individual and organisational coaching
This process was enabled by an extraordinary team of African women coaches and organisational development specialists, who brought their soulful feminist approach to the process of nurturing individuals to find and embrace their inner power, as well as find creative ways to manage and rethink organisational governance.
At AWDF we know that it is vital to invest in both the individual and the collective, as effective and ethical organisational systems and frameworks are only made possible in African women’s organisations through the visions and practices of effective and ethical leaders, well-grounded in feminist values and ideology and with a clarity of purpose that can accelerate the process of social justice and development.
The stories in this collection are intended to be used to help reflect, (re)think and help encourage conversations in African women’s organisations around the process of personal growth and collective growth and change in leadership as individual staff members and as organisations.

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: African Women\'s Development Fund., 2019

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English

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Social change
Leadership and governance
Transformation

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Article

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