Womens Leadership Centre (WLC) Women’s Leadership Centre (WLC) is a feminist women’s rights organisation in Namibia.<p></p> WLC works towards building a society in which all women actively engage in shaping the politics, practices and values of both public and private spheres of life.<p></p> WLC supports a grassroots development of leadership among Namibian women by promoting the voice, visibility, creativity and transformative leadership of women from the most marginalised sectors of society, supporting them to gain feminist leadership skills, form women’s groups, and to articulate their experiences, needs and desires, informed by a critical feminist consciousness of their human rights as women and as citizens.<p></p> WLC believes that change towards a just world must take place at the personal level, the social level and the political level. Objective 1: To strengthen the WLC through support for organisational development</p><br>
Activities:<p></p>
Development of a three-year Organisational Plan<p></p>
The WLC is in the process of engaging a feminist consultant who is active in the women’s movement in South Africa to support us in developing a three-year organisational plan and budget, for the period 2019 to 2021.<p></p>
Re-launching the WLC website<p></p>
We have employed a professional web designer who has designed the new website for WLC and is ready to upload the content and train our volunteers in updating it regularly to showcase our activities and events. This activity will be finalised in the second half of 2018.<p></p>
Objective 2: To strengthen the capacity of young women and traditional leaders and provide spaces at which they can hold the Namibian state accountable to women’s rights in Zambezi Region. (WLC has worked in the Caprivi / Zambezi Region since 2005 on the prevention of harmful cultural practices that subject girls and women to all forms or violence and high risk of exposure to HIV.)</p><br>
Activities:<p></p>
1 Publication on the 2017 National Dialogue<p></p> 
WLC has compiled a documentation of the proceedings and recommendations of the National Dialogue on the Prevention of Harmful Cultural Practices in Zambezi Region, conducted by WLC in Katima Mulilo in 2017. It will be printed in the second half of 2018 and distributed to stakeholders at the national and regional level as well as the media. This documentation includes the inputs to the National Dialogue by UNICEF, the Zambezi Regional Governor, the Ombudsman, the Chairperson of the Law Reform and Development Commission, as well as testimonies by girls, young women and older women, and traditional leaders who have participated in the WLC programme in Zambezi Region.<p></p> 
2 Field Visit and Stakeholder Roundtable in Zambezi Region<p></p>
The visits were hosted by the local community facilitators and a traditional leader and facilitated by the volunteer regional coordinator of the WLC programme based in Katima Mulilo. The meetings were well attended by both women and men from the two communities, including traditional leaders, and the facilitator led discussions on the need for continued efforts to prevent harmful cultural practices that subject girls and women to all forms of violence and expose them to high risk of contracting HIV.<p></p> 
These outreach meetings were followed by a half-day group meeting in Katima Mulilo of the community facilitators and traditional leaders from Chinchimane and Libula (both belonging to the Mafwe Traditional Authority) for a discussion on the way forward for this programme. Two young women from the Mayeyi Traditional Authority in western Zambezi Region joined this meeting for the first time and were keen to participate in the Zambezi for Women’s Rights Programme. Programme participants from the Masubia and Mashi traditional authorities were not able to make it to the meeting. The group agreed that they would like to conduct educational outreach visits to other villages in all four ethnic groups across the region.<p></p>
A stakeholders meeting was conducted with participants from regional and local government agencies and NGOs, many of whom had been at the 2017 National Dialogue. Some of the participants shared their activities since the dialogue with regard to the prevention of harmful cultural practices. For example, both the regional director of the gender ministry and the representative from the Regional Aids Coordinating Committee stated that they are doing research in different communities to find out whether all the practices documented through the Zambezi for Women’s Rights Programme and presented through personal testimonies at the National Dialogue were still taking place. There was contestation about the practice of sexual readiness testing, but broad agreement on the other practices documented and the need for preventing these, not only to prevent HIV but also to protect girls and women from violence. The meeting showed that there is awareness of this issue among the stakeholders, and a willingness to engage and to work together.