Youth For Women Foundation has initiated an extensive 3-month long advocacy program for 65+ young people, under the mentorship of professional experts, on gender studies especially gender-based violence, sexual reproductive health rights, LGBTQIA+ Rights, the UN sustainable development goals, and advocacy and communication skills in rura Iraq.
The young leaders represented the most diverse cohor ever, with the majority coming from rural, refugee, IDP camps and remote communities with representation of the historically marginalized minorities, religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds in Iraq.
The Foundation has initiated a three day long advocacy conference for over 45 religious leaders of more than 21 various rural, marginalized, and religious minorities of Iraq.
The initiative has educated, empowered, and recruited religious leaders as sustainble activists for promoting gender equality, combating domestic violence and harmful practices, and eradicating the prevalent religiously-based LGBTQphobia in the region. We empowered them to act as amplifiers of our key messages to hundrends of other men in the weekly religious speeches of their marginalized communities.
The religious leader has also endorsed and signed our petition for the national domestic violence policy reform of a 5% increase in the annual budget allocated for the policy implementation in rural communities nationwide.
In August 2021, Youth For Women Foundation has empowered the 65+ young people trained through the GEA program, to lead 7 community awareness campaigns in 7 diffrent locations of Iraq, including two refugee camps, an internally displaced peope camp, a semi-urban community, and three marginalized cities where most GBV cases take place. Each group of young leaders within their deployed group was assigned for a spesific role during the awareness campaigns to ensure the implementation of the most accurate, successful and risk mitigated initiatives for women and girls , given the sensitivity of the subject in the target communities.
The young leaders handed out 350+ educational pamphlets to 350 women and girls that contained information on the domestic violence policy, the GBV hotline, and health and legal services they can refer to in case of domestic GBV exposure.
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