The Young Women Leadership Development Programme (YWLDP)

THE YWLDP is a programme under The Trust whose goal is to develop a mass of young empowered women at tertiary level in Zimbabwe who can take up leadership roles at the institutional level or public office.   
The idea of having the programme is to catch them young, based on the notion that crucial life changing decisions are made in the early teens to early twenties. The knowledge and skills they attain are in preparation for the future, as leaders of tomorrow.
Through the programme’s activities, the female students are equipped with personal empowerment, feminist leadership and career development skills to assist them in making well informed decisions.
Two representatives from each institution are taken through training by the YWLDP. It becomes the responsibility of these two to formulate young women’s forums at their respective institutions.  At the forums, the young women are given an opportunity to address issues that affect them and their learning environments. It could be issues to do with sexual harassment, accommodation or any other forms of discrimination that they face at their institutions, particularly gender based issues.
The Women’s Trust programme officer for the YWLDP is overall in charge of the programmes and assists the forums to map action plans for their clubs, and check on progress. The mandate of The Trust is to provide technical support to these forums in forms of ideas, finances and training where needed.
Realising the need for balance in the young women’s academic lives, the YWLDP provides them with platforms to network and learn from each other through sports activities such as the Securico Tertiary Institutions Netball Tournament (STINT).
As a way of giving back to the community, the young women in turn take the lead in grooming young girls at high school level in the rural and urban areas. Interlocutor
Where it is happening
THE Women’s Trust is currently working with 13 tertiary institutions in the country and these are as follows: University of Zimbabwe, National University of Science and Technology, Midlands State University, Africa University, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Bindura State University, Mutare Teachers’ College, Mary Mount Teacher’s College, Mutare Polytechnic College, Women’s University in Africa, Harare Institute of Technology and Great Zimbabwe State University. 
How it is happening
Two representatives from each of these institutions are provided with training of trainers’ life skills programme to be able to carry out outreach programmes at the high schools that they would have identified as their targets.
From this point, the representatives of these institutions bear the responsibility of formulating these clubs and ensuring that they are viable. They come up with action plans to implement and submit to TWT’s entry point is at this stage where the clubs need to implement the action plans. The YWLDP programme officer works closely with the patrons and deans of students. 
The training focuses on providing personal empowerment and professional development. The areas of focus that are covered during the training are Feminist Leadership, Personal Empowerment, Gender and Development, Practical Life skills, Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Facilitation Skills.
As a way of coming up with an action plan, the students identify at least two possible issues they would like to tackle when they return to their institutions.  Follow up workshops are then conducted with the same representatives who would have been trained to ensure activities are executed according to the plan of the forums.
The Women’s Trust also provides training to Students’ Representative Councils (SRC) at the tertiary institutions as focal persons in gender responsiveness. It is for this reason that every year a gender training workshop is done specifically targeting those who have been elected into the SRC.
Under the YWLDP, The Women’s Trust also works closely with the patrons and deans of students from the institutions. These are taken through training on gender and women’s rights issues. Gender mainstreaming has been identified as of critical importance for the patrons and deans of students as it may help them on how best they can apply the knowledge in their institutions to effect gender sensitive changes.
Listed below, are some of the activities that the young women’s clubs have been involved in: 
  clean up campaigns,
  encouraging young women to take up strategic leadership positions,
  mentoring and information dissemination to young women in high schools,
  participating during commemoration activities such as the International Women’s Day 
  charity visits,
  participating in national healing process and the constitution making process,
  mobilisation and sensitisation of young women on the importance of participation and
  attend networking meetings of Forum societies at institutional levels.