CLI together with its long-term partner We Love Kairouan and CLI’s new partner We Start kicked-off the new Feminist Leaders Project implemented in the city of Kairouan, Central Tunisia. The project’s goal is to form a local feminist action group of 24 young feminist leaders who will co- develop female-led local initiatives for improved living conditions in the city, for both women and men.
The project started off with a joint learning journey on feminist topics such as mental health, Opportunities for women to participate in politics, violence against women and how to protect women of such. The goal was to gain a common understanding of what feminism means generally, but also personally for the women themselves, and overall which feminist development is particularly needed in Kairouan. Together, the 22 women determined the topics that are most important to them and formed two working groups on the following topics: 1) Women’s health including mental health issues, sexual health, and awareness of reproductive rights. 2) Awareness for the law 58 which prevents violence against women and economic independence as a pathway to get out of violent relationships.
After determining the topics of the initiatives, the women were trained during a 4-day training on how to set up successful collaborations with local stakeholders, to implement their ideas in the future. In the next months, the feminist leaders will test the resonance for their ideas among the relevant stakeholders. The goal is to include them in the process of developing the initial ideas further and integrate the local perspectives and experiences into the process. By the end of this first project year, the feminist leaders action groups plans to hold a first local dialogue forum with the engaged stakeholders, present the first results of their conversations, and talk about next steps in actually implementing the jointly developed local initiatives.
The project is funded by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt).