Background
Objective
Strategies
Focus Areas
           Leadership & Capacity Building
           Livelihood & Economic Recovery
           Advocacy & Protection

Focus Area : Leadership & Capacity Building

Helping Women Help Themselves

Aceh's vibrant and diverse civil society has long been an arena where women's networks and groups come together to work for Aceh's peace and development. Many civil society groups in the province were formed as a response to issues emerging from the long-running conflict. As many were based in coastal towns, most groups lost huge number of staff and volunteers in the tsunami, as well as the limited capital they had available. Yet, within days their staffs had turned their hands to humanitarian work, together with international actors and were devoting all their energies rebuilding the population's networks.

Our Leadership and Capacity Building (L&CB) program makes a point of running both bottom up and top down programs, offering training and support for grassroot organizations as well as for our Government partners. In this way, L&CB supports and feed into our two focus areas, ensuring that NGOs, women's groups, civil servants and other partners have the skills and understand the necessary actions to deliver programmes that truly respond to and reflect on women's core needs in the reconstruction and peace development of Aceh.

On to the drafting of the new law on the governance of Aceh, post peace agreement in August 2005, UNIFEM together with its local partner have reacted quickly to facilitate women's organizations networks in reviewing the new Law on Governing Aceh (LoGA) draft as well as gathering inputs from civil society and academia. To ensure that the result and recommendations from such reviews are adopted, UNIFEM is supporting leading women activists to carry out strategic lobbying and negotiations with key individuals and organizations at the local and national levels, in the preparation of the LoGA.

The L&CB program provides the foundation for UNIFEM's delivery objectives, while ensuring that our partners' development will support and eventually result in further projects in the near future.