NAWO is very grateful to the University of Exeter and World Associations of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts for holding their Gender Symposium on 12th September 2017, focusing on how organisations can support young women in leadership.

NAWO took this opportunity to continue our commitment to putting young women at the centre of work for young women’s rights, by asking our United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 2017 Delegate, Lucy Cole, to present. UN CSW is the annual policy-making gathering of 187 governments, thousands of non-governmental organisations and leading experts to create an agreement on how best to progress the rights of women worldwide.

You can watch Lucy’s speech above, where she shared lessons from NAWO’s work, empowering women and women’s organisations to understand their rights and be represented in all levels of decision-making, including international fora. Lucy is a sixth form student, hoping to study Law, and spoke at CSW61 (2017) about ‘Creating Space for Young Women and Girls in Civil Society’. In her speech at #GenderEqualityUofE she highlighted a number of vital ways for organisations and individuals to ensure young women can be supported to take the lead in their own lives, and realise their human rights.

NAWO also presented from the perspective of our organisation’s work, highlighting the lessons learned in our #YWAAdvance initiative. So if you enjoyed hearing about Lucy’s experience of CSW, keep in touch as there will be more on #GenderEqualityUofE and NAWO’s work (including #YWAAdvance) to come!

For those of you interested in learning more about the United Nations’ CSW:

NAWO is the secretariat for The CSW Alliance, a result of a UK grass-roots movement to set up a mechanism for NGOs to relate to one another and to government around the UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women meetings. It was established in July 2012 and has grown to over 300 members.

As part of ensuring NAWO’s members are represented at CSW, for over a decade NAWO’s Young Women’s Alliance has been enabling young people to learn about human rights, international efforts to protect and realise them, and how they can take action in their own lives.

To learn more about CSW delegations and how you can take part at these links, either as a young person, or as an organisation/individual.