About FWID

Founded in 1997, Cairo-based Forum for Women in Development (FWID) is a civil society organization comprised of a network of Egyptian women’s rights activists (female and male) from different backgrounds that advocate for reform of policies and legislation that discriminate against women, including personal status laws. FWID works to empower Egyptian women for greater involvement in decision making. It is building a culture of learning organizations, mainstreaming a model of participatory leadership among economic cooperatives, overcoming gender gaps in Egyptian society, and advocating for equality and justice. FWID is addressing issues of violence against women, economic illiteracy, poverty, and nationality and citizenship, and working to strengthen networking and solidarity among NGOS. Through its training and outreach programs, FWID builds the capacities of civil society organizations to work for gender equality and to lobby for reform of laws, policies, and practices that discriminate against women. FWID also works to collect, produce, and disseminate information about women and gender to researchers, decision makers, and partner organizations. 

As a WLP partner since 2005, FWID has collaborated with other WLP partners in the MENA region on women’s rights advocacy campaigns, training programs, and peer-to-peer exchanges among affiliate CSOs. FWID has translated and adapted WLP manuals for use in the Egyptian context and uses WLP curricula in its capacity building trainings for its member CSOs. FWID works primarily in Arabic.

Recent Accomplishments

• Over the last decade, in collaboration with WLP, FWID has carried out national and regional advocacy campaigns, including a reform initiative for family courts, women’s right to nationality, and an end to reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
• In 2014, FWID organized a MENA regional conference that put forward a new, comprehensive vision of social justice from a feminist perspective in the areas of labor, health, and education. The conclusions were the result of a research-based assessment conducted by FWID of current programs, policies, laws, and challenges affecting the three issues. 
• Translated WLP’s manuals on women’s leadership, political participation, and youth leadership into Egyptian dialect, and revised case studies to reflect Egyptian cultural contexts and environment. 
• Collaborated on a regional project on economic reform for gender equality led by WLP Lebanon/CRTD-A. As part of the project, FWID developed a comprehensive set of revised economic policies for an expert roundtable on economic opportunities and alternative policies held in Cairo, in November 2015.
• A FWID delegate to WLP’s MENA regional youth training, Active Citizenship and Movement Building Institute for Millennials in Lebanon, contributed to the development of the Refugees Restoring to Humanity Campaign, a program that helps integrate refugees into host communities and builds compassion towards refugees.
• FWID is working as a house of expertise in the field of spreading cooperative thought and establishing cooperatives. FWID provides educational and training materials, reading, audio and visual.
• Formed a task force of trainers and non-governmental organizations to spread cooperative work and provide technical support in establishing cooperatives.
• Runs an annual camp for young women to support them to learn and practice participatory leadership and to bring about a positive change in the attitudes of young women about their issues and community issues. The camp is held under the slogan "We Learn, We Participate, and We Change".
• Began working on the issues of the right to education and continuing education, and became a member of one of the most important Arab learning networks, Arab Network for Literacy and Adult Education. As part of this network, FWID is also a member of the umbrella group, the Arab House for Learning and Development (an expertise collective composed for four Arab networks on learning and education). FWID, through national training of trainers workshops, trains literacy facilitators in the field of participatory leadership, continuous learning, and environmental learning under the program title “Participatory Leadership as an Introduction to Adult Learning.

Organizational Programs

Women’s Leadership and Empowerment Training

• FWID supports and strengthens civil society in Egypt by developing participatory leadership skills in women and youth. FWID offers trainings and capacity building programs for participants, who in turn train others in their local communities. FWID adapts WLP curriculum for context-specific circumstances, unites women leaders, provides a network of support, and creates an environment of learning that enables women to reach senior leadership positions. Building on their own organizational training in utilizing technology for activism, FWID is strengthening basic computer knowledge among its grassroots networks in order to expand the reach of women’s leadership and empowerment trainings.

Women’s Economic Rights

• FWID holds training workshops on founding and managing women’s cooperatives as well as mainstreaming gender in cooperative work. Participants include university students, youth, journalists, researchers, lawyers, political representatives, and members of civil society organizations and professional groups. FWID’s workshops and training of trainers programs enhance cooperative action, such as working to register cooperatives in Egyptian governorates. 
• FWID advocates for women’s workforce participation and the establishment of a women’s quota for trade union participation. FWID also conducts research on gender and micro-lending in Egypt, and works with women’s microcredit organizations.

Legislation and Law Reforms

• FWID has been an active voice in supporting law reforms, including the following regional campaigns: Right to Nationality, CEDAW’s Equality Without Reservations, and A Just Family Law.  FWID has also collaborated with other NGOs and leaders to protest issues including a decision by the State Council to reject appointments of female judges, and policies on marriage of minors.
• Other reforms of concern for FWID include Egyptian personal status laws that discriminate against women. FWID contributed to an alliance of NGO’s that formed a Constitutional Amendment Commission aimed at influencing the realization of women’s rights in Egypt.

Youth Leadership

• FWID adapts its leadership training program to develop young leaders in Egypt. After the Egyptian revolution in 2011, FWID formed a civil society youth forum and conducted training and mentorship activities with young women and men on leadership, communication, and active citizenship skills. Many of the forum’s members have since launched new CSOs and are involved in awareness-raising activities in their communities and on social media.
• FWID also works with CSOs targeting youth economic awareness. FWID started a young women’s leadership program called the New Leaders Forum for students and young volunteers, and FWID continues to build and support youth networks through online education programs.