Every year on April 24, YWCAs worldwide celebrate World YWCA Day. This year, for #WorldYWCADay2023, we highlight the power of YWCA safe spaces to build community and advance human rights. We invite all #YWCALeaders to join the global celebration under the theme: “Every Safe Space Has a Story.”
As one of the oldest and largest feminist, faith-based organizations. it was in 1855 when YWCA first provided safe housing to young women in London seeking employment. This marked the earliest concept of YWCA Safe Spaces. Today, YWCAs in local communities in over 100 countries from every region continue to provide safe spaces, serving over 25 million women, young women, and girls of all ages. While the idea behind YWCA Safe Spaces first came to life as an actual physical space, the practice has evolved into any space where women, young women, and girls can come together, share, listen, and actively engage with each other in a safe manner.
Mark this special occasion and share your stories around safe spaces. What comes to your mind when you think of “safe spaces”? What incident, experience, or anecdote can you recall regarding your first safe space, your best safe space, a space you felt yourself for the first time, or even a space where you explored the idea of safety beyond yourself?
Because every safe space has a story, we invite you to engage with the YWCA movement this World YWCA Day 2023 by bringing to light YOUR safe space story.
Read the tool to find more information on the theme, ideas on celebrating the day, and engaging in social media with visuals and social media covers in the tool.
Don’t forget to engage on social media using the hashtag #YWCALeaders #WorldYWCADay2023.
Download the toolkit in:
Every year on April 24, YWCAs around the world celebrate World YWCA Day. For 160 years, YWCA leaders have taken action in communities to make human rights a reality.In a recent in-depth study done by World YWCA on leadership, many #YWCALeaders shared that they believe “leadership is influencing, guiding and motivating women and young women to realise their potential and work together to achieve a common goal.”
For World YWCA Day 2022, join us as we will celebrate YWCA day under the theme: ” #YWCALeaders Co-Creating Goal 2035, Not just some place we are going to, but a place we are creating together“. Serving with love remains a common mandate for all the work we do on ground, in communities and at national and international level. In 2015, when the YWCA leaders came together to define “our collective goal” as a single shared statement of our commitment for the future, with YWCA contributing within its own space, context and resources, Goal 2035 was born.
This year, as we celebrate #WorldYWCADay, we invite all #YWCALeaders to share their insights on centering young women and girls, shifting power structures to achieve a world free from violence.
Goal 2035 is not just some place we are all going towards, but a place we are all committed to building and creating together as YWCA leaders. Which is why for World YWCA Day 2022 on April 24, this year, we invite YWCA Leaders to think, deliberate, engage and find spaces to co-create, acting towards Goal 2035. Find more information on the theme, ideas on how to celebrate the day, and how to engage in social media with visuals and social media covers in the tool.
Don’t forget to engage on social media using the hashtag #YWCALeaders #WYD2022.
You can also go to our Trello board to download the social media covers and editable templates.
Download the toolkit in:
Welcome to the Feminist Consultation Methodology!
We are excited for this guide to support your work in engaging and co-creating with young women. If this is your first time using the Methodology, we recommend reviewing this guide in full to develop a robust understanding. This guide is a great source of in-depth explanations and contains many tools and templates to get you started. We urge you to adapt them as needed to meet the vision of your consultation. These are not one-size-fits-all since every individual and organisation has different needs! Regardless of the consultation you design, be sure to centre the voices of young women and prioritise diversity, equity, access, and inclusion.
This guide is to present information so that it is accessible and inclusive. When we say “you”, we are referring to whoever you are—a member of a volunteer group, a non-profit organisation, a student research group, a corporation, an individual, or a community leader. You may be a first-time researcher or you may have lots of past experience. When we say “we”, we are referring to World YWCA and the co-creators of this Methodology who now use it regularly.
In the spirit of co-creation and taking the feminist approach, we encourage you to incorporate stories and quotes into your consultation where possible. Not only will this provide credibility and strengthen your research but it is also a way of acknowledging the contributions of your participants. If you come across a powerful learning or story during your consultation
process, we invite you to share it with us to help evolve this Methodology. This Methodology is a continual learning journey for all of us and was created by young women for young women.
Let’s walk this journey together…
The World YWCA, in collaboration with Geneva Peace Week 2022, bring you a conversation on the role that women and cross-regional solidarity play in the peace processes. The World YWCA is a grassroots, feminist, community-driven movement that has worked tirelessly for the past 167 years to make the world a safer and more just place for women and young women and girls globally. Over the years the YWCA movement has signed more than 40 resolutions aimed at peace and justice, contributing massively to the UNSCR1325. A key piece of this work lies in the support that YWCA organizations give one another as they advocate for women at peace tables. By understanding that global systems of oppression and conflict are interlocked, partnerships such as that between YWCA Palestine and YWCA Japan are formed, where learnings, support and solidarity informs peace processes.
To learn more about this seemingly unlikely coalition, we have Amal Tarazi from Palestine and Sumie Ogasawara from Japan tell us more about their experiences in practices of cross-regional solidarity, debunking assumptions about conflict being a fact we should not question, and the uniquely indisputable role women play in the fight for peace with justice under the #BulletAndDove concept.
Since 1904, the World YWCA and World YMCA have traditionally collaborated together for the World Week of Prayer and World Fellowship. Celebrated each year on the second week of November, both organisations join efforts to produce a booklet with a theme, a set of bible studies for each day, and an annual bible reading plan so that communities around the world can come together in prayer for a specific cause linked to current realities.
“Ignite: Praying the Impact” is the theme of this year’s YWCA and YMCA World Week of Prayer, occurring from 13-19 November 20220. Aligned with the long-term strategies of the World YMCA (Vision 2030) and World YWCA (Goal 2035), the theme highlights the need for unity and transformative change to create a long-lasting impact in communities worldwide.
Access the booklet in English, French, Spanish and Japanese with the buttons below:
Join us in prayer, and let us collectively push for transformation so we can be “Ignited” and create a positive impact in the world through God’s love.
Remember to tag World YWCA on social media channels so we can share your local activities with the larger Y movement.
For additional information, kindly contact daniela.zelaya@worldywca.org
YWCA’s Safe Space is informed by remarkable history and experience, as well as shifting technologies and social-economic-political contexts. YWCA’s Safe Space serves as an important concept that is scalable, customizable, and applied to the specific needs of people in their local communities, dealing with different, relevant issues and connecting them with resources, information, and opportunities. With shifting technologies, these safe spaces have begun in the virtual world—connecting women of all ages beyond geographic barriers, and weaving together a shared community.
This Guide, Our Spaces, Power Spaces tells the story of how and why practising safe spaces can be transformative. And at the heart of any transformative action is a profound sense of engagement, buy-in, and ownership. With this in mind, this Guide is a customisable template to make your own! Adding in your unique context to this Guide helps your safe space to be culturally
relevant. Building on the Defining Standards in this Guide allows you to create a welcoming environment.
Download the guide:
Edition 2022.
The World YWCA’s leadership work and approach are feminist and progressive; community-based and intergenerational; focused on the most marginalised and under-represented; and accountable to be responsive to the needs and priorities of women, young women and girls in all their diversities. While leadership work in YWCA is as old as the YWCA itself, the Rise Up! Young Women’s Leadership Program was created in 2010 by young women from the Asia-Pacific region for young women with the intention to contribute to their empowerment, so that they rise up and discover their leadership potential. When we say “transformative leadership,” we mean leadership that brings together knowledge, skills, and feminist values, all of which are aligned towards the larger good of communities.
This Guide builds upon the existing knowledge, creativity, and capacity of YWCA young women to become leaders for positive social, economic and environmental change. It celebrates the processes by which young women explore their strengths, educate themselves, identify as decision makers, and have the confidence, knowledge, information, skills, and support to understand and manage power imbalances, challenge injustices, hold powerful people to account and make positive changes in their lives. It also embraces the core values of Rise Up! to strengthen its participatory peer-to-peer approach to training and mentoring. It acknowledges that young women’s leadership actively aims to disrupt patriarchal structures and helps in building a powerful, supportive network of young women leaders of present and future by decolonising leadership.
Through this Guide, we hope to build a beautiful activist tapestry together, starting with the different threads that come together to make unique fabrics (that’s you!) and weaving in all of the key elements of transformative and feminist leadership. We seek to build out from individual to movement, just as each individual thread matters to the cloth.
YWCA’s Week Without Violence is an annual global campaign held in the third week of October every year for 25 years to raise awareness, promote change and enable positive action towards ending violence against women, young women and girls in all their diversity.
At YWCA, we believe in establishing relationships in the communities we work to establish an intersectional support system that sees all survivors and the complexities of their place in the world. This year, we are calling young leaders worldwide to join YWCA’s Week Without Violence to raise awareness, take action and stand in solidarity with the 1 in 3 women who experience Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in their lifetime and the many who are at risk of it every day.
Join us from October 17-22, 2022, to engage with the world through education and awareness in this fight against sexual gender-based violence.
Download it and contribute to the fight against GBV by sharing the content in social media, planning engaging activities and/or advocating with other tools shared in this document!
“Beauty from Brokenness“
Since 1904, the World YWCA and World YMCA have traditionally collaborated together for the World Week of Prayer and World Fellowship. Celebrated each year on the second week of November, both organisations join efforts to produce a booklet with a theme, a set of bible studies for each day, and an annual bible reading plan so that communities around the world can come together in prayer for a specific cause linked to current realities.
While the ongoing global pandemic continues to impact our everyday lives and present new changes and challenges, the World Week of Prayer’s theme invites us to reflect on the process of healing and restoration. Inspired by the Japanese concept of Kintsugi, the theme focuses on the beauty in imperfection and sees repair and breakage of an object as a part of its story and transformation. This beautiful idea can apply to our life experiences and how we overcome our challenges and learn from them. This year’s theme also reflects on how God’s light can heal brokenness and burst through, reaching out to those around us.
As we are in the process of healing and restoration from the pandemic, we continue to serve our communities with the spirit of forgiveness and inclusiveness, ensuring dignity for all and celebrating God’s unconditional love for us during this time of renewal
Join us for an insightful conversation about the state of women’s rights, human rights, and social justice. World YWCA is a global movement that has empowered women to transform themselves and their communities for over 125 years. From war zones to refugee camps, prisons to universities, World YWCA is at the forefront of advancing social justice.
The Advocacy Toolkit Podcast is a four-part series produced by the World YWCA. It looks at successful campaigns from recent times within YWCA and the larger women’s rights movement, while talking about the stories behind them. With in-depth interviews, high quality sound editing and a visual backdrop of stunning global images, this podcast is a hands-on guide to advocacy success.If you need help advocating for change on issues such as gender-based violence, ending child marriage, and improving girls’ education, we have you covered here. Get some practical tips and some inspiring stories to get you going with your advocacy.
