Announcements
In October 2010, the African Union launched the African Women's Decade (AWD) 2010-2020. The aim of the African Women’s Decade is to advance gender equality by accelerating implementation of Dakar, Beijing and AU Assembly Decisions on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE), through dual top down and bottom up approach which is inclusive of grassroots participation.
With this in mind, MEWC is launching the "Let's MakeAWDcount" campaign, a call to action dedicated to making the African Women’s Decade COUNT! on the 15th of May.
At the occasion of the launch of our Let’s MakeAWDCount Campaign, the MEWC social media team will be launching the #MyAWD forum. The goal of this forum is to hear from our followers and supporters what the African Women’s Decade means to them?
Make Every Woman Count believes the African Women’s Decade is a chance for African women’s issues to take center stage and we want to make sure that African women’s voices are heard! The #MyAWD forum will take place on our Facebook and Twitter pages and will allow participants to share their opinions with all of the MEWC supporters. We want to hear from African women and people from across the globe about what makes AWD important to them and why people should join us in our ‘Let’s MakeAWDCount’ Campaign in the coming years.
#MyAWD will be launched on the 15th of May, 6 months before the 2nd year of the African Women’s Decade. It will run from the 15-18 May 2012.The team will periodically post questions to get supporters to participate in the social media forum and to generate discussion about AWD- its themes, progress, challenges and most importantly what it means to YOU!
In the next few months we will also be extending the social media campaign to our website, initiating a Let's MakeAWDcount forum for our supporters to contribute their thoughts to our questions and to encourage African women, activists and gender-focused organizations to engage in discussion and debate about issues facing African women today. We will structure the forum around our key theme areas: Women, Peace and Security, Violence Against Women, HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Rights, Economic Empowerment, Political Participation, Human Rights of women and girls. We believe that launching forums will bring us closer to our mission and our efforts to be a platform for African women to have their voices heard and their expertise published.
With this new campaign , we will launch an online forum discussion topic on our website every three months with a new question and new opportunities to have progressive and educational conversations. We will be wanting to hear from you!
Stay tuned for the launch of this exciting opportunity and in the meantime, keep an eye out for next week’s launch of #MyAWD on Twitter and Facebook on May 15 through May 18.