Creating a Legacy for Change: Empowering leadership in young women and girls through Leadership and Gender clubs in DRCongo

• In Event: Girls and Women Leading the Way: How Clubs Empower Changemakers

Proposal

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) faces a number of educational challenges, including armed conflict, poverty, natural disasters, the Ebola epidemic, geographical isolation, inadequate school infrastructure to meet the specific needs of girls and children with disabilities, early marriage and pregnancy, and gender-based violence. These challenges have a negative impact on access to and quality of education. Girls' enrolment rates are lower than boys' in terms of access to primary school, retention and, above all, completion of primary and secondary education. These disparities are reinforced by traditional attitudes to the status and role of women and girls in the community. The COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated the socio-economic and emotional situation of the population. School closures, social distancing and confinement strategies had a different impact on girls and boys, particularly adolescent girls, due to the gendered roles expected of them in household chores. This limited their access to distance learning programs. Children and young people (girls and boys) represent the hope of a better future and are the drivers of change for development. It is essential to implement strategies to support, protect and guide them.
This donor-funded education project adapted the Peace Corps’ Girls Leading our World (GLOW) club and camp model, which they call “Leadership and Gender” groups (using the French acronym “LEG”) to empower young women and girls (and boys on positive masculinity) to be leaders of change in their communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The project contextualized the LEG club and camp model to different DRCongo community contexts, including communities where indigenous children and youth integrate LEG clubs in an effort to bolster their leadership in their classically marginalized communities and to bridge the gap caused by decades of discrimination. The presentation will share the experience of how the model was contextualized to different DRC community contexts, as well as the findings from the qualitative study. The findings from the focus groups and interviews with LEG participants, parents, teachers, and community leaders found that the clubs and camps have had a positive impact on participant children and youth leaders’ confidence, agency, and engagement in leading their communities to be more inclusive, change their gender norms, and accepting of diversity. In relation to the conference theme, these clubs and camps have shown to be powerful stimulators of challenging the status quo whereby vulnerable children and youth can assert themselves and contribute to their society. Participants in this presentation will take away ideas and strategies for how to structure similar opportunities to amplify the voices of children and youth, especially girls and young women and marginalized populations in their communities, to bring about social change and provide them with the confidence to ensure their future livelihoods and roles as contributing citizens.

Author

• LWANGO NYANGABO MADHO, FHI 360 Family Health International