Africa: Reinvigorating and Sustaining a Vibrant Women's Movement

Roundtable Meeting on Reinvigorating and Sustaining a Vibrant Women's Movement in the SADC Region

Press Release:

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) in collaboration with its partners the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Trust (WLSA), the SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF), and HIVOS are convening a regional roundtable meeting on reinvigorating and sustaining a vibrant women’s movement in the SADC region.

The meeting will explore, in depth, the dwindling vibrancy of the women’s movement in the SADC region – a diminished resource base, limited capacity and ability to effectively mobilise and organise around new challenges such as HIV and AIDS, among other issues – and provide a road map towards its reinvigoration, guided by recommendations from findings of a research commissioned by OSISA in
2005. Participants will engage with the situational analysis – examining the causes of the deteriorating vibrancy, proposing strategies and modalities to address this and collectively draw up an action plan with defined roles, responsibilities and timeframes for its implementation.

Key speakers will include Honourable Speaker Nthloi Motsamai of Lesotho, amongst other gender and women’s rights activists from across the region.

The roundtable meeting will bring together about 100 stakeholders from national, sub-regional and regional levels, individual activists, NGO coalitions, CBOs, government gender machineries, funding organisations, UN agencies, academics, among others in the SADC region and beyond.

The meeting is expected to come up with a regional plan of action that will not only seek to reinvigorate, but also sustain a vibrant women’s movement in Southern Africa.

The meeting will take place at the Kopanong Conference Centre in Johannesburg from 9-11 October 2006.

For more information on the meeting please contact: Alice Kanengoni or Thoko Budaza at: Tel: +27 11 403 3414 or email: [email][email protected] or [email][email protected] Thoko Budaza Media and Advocacy, HIV and AIDS Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa Tel. +27 11 403 3414 Fax.
+27 11 403 2708 www.osisa.org http://www.osisa.org