Our Partnership Model
Women's Learning Partnership is a partnership of 20 autonomous women’s rights organizations located throughout the Global South that promote women’s leadership, civic engagement, and human rights. We are a learning organization that is flexible, evolving, and responsive to the changes in our environment. We sustain our partnership through open, ongoing, and in- depth communication about our vision, goals, and activities.
About Women's Learning Partnership
WLP is dedicated to training and supporting women in the Global South to become leaders and advocates for a just, equitable, and peaceful world where women’s human rights are realized and protected. We develop curricula and learning tools that are relevant to the issues in the communities where they are used. We link feminist activists from the Global South to others around the world to share their knowledge and to work together. And, we serve as a women’s rights resource center, collecting and preserving documents of historical relevance to the global women’s movement and producing research and training materials on women’s advancement, human rights, and human security that we disseminate worldwide.
Over the past decade and a half, WLP has refined our foundational curriculum on participatory leadership to promote learning experiences that are horizontal, participatory, and mutual. Our aim is to empower women to take on leadership roles in their families, communities, and societies, to realize their own vision of a better future. Within their linguistic and local cultural contexts, participants in WLP’s leadership workshops engage in discussions about human conflict and challenges, and explore a range of topics that include collective empowerment, women’s rights advocacy, political participation, democracy-building, and ending violence against women.
WLP strives for both a quantitative change in the number of women in formal leadership roles and a qualitative change in the type of leadership women exercise. WLP’s programs and training materials have reached hundreds of thousands of women and men in over 50 countries, strengthening women’s activism, empowering women's organizations to become self-sustaining, and fueling the global women’s movement.
Our Partnership Model
WLP’s partnership model capitalizes on local expertise and engagement, and promotes grassroots ownership of initiatives and programs. Each WLP partner is autonomous and independent, while sharing a vision for women’s equality, human rights, and democracy.
All our programs and activities originate with the partners, who serve as WLP’s programmatic board. At our annual meetings, the partners engage in peer-to-peer learning, sharing their experiences and planning WLP’s activities. The concepts, strategies, and curriculum we develop together are adjusted by each partner to fit their local contexts.
The partners replicate the partnership methodology and peer-to-peer training with other local, national, and regional affiliate organizations throughout the Global South. Our office in Bethesda, Maryland, acts as the programmatic and organizational secretariat for the Partnership.
Transnational Partners Convening
WLP hosts an annual, week-long event and celebration that is attended by representatives from all of our partner organizations, our Board of Directors, and members of our Advisory Council. At our Transnational Partners Convenings, or TPCs, we conduct our State of the Partnership and State of the World reviews. The entire organization participates in monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes that allow us to assess our impact, review our best practices, and commit (or recommit) the Partnership to campaigns and new organizational directions. Our TPC gatherings frequently lead to new advocacy initiatives and help to build momentum for our global advocacy campaigns.
Each year, WLP organizes the TPC to coincide with other significant international gatherings so that our partners and board members can meet with activists from around the globe. We also plan public events to coincide with the TPC, which raise the visibility of our partners’ work, and bring to the public’s attention our newest films and publications. WLP records our TPC events to preserve our own institutional history and WLP’s engagement with the women’s movement.
Below is a map of the world showing all of the WLP partners. Please click any of the pins on the map to learn more about our partners’ work around the globe.