Eswatini: Thembie Matsenjwa

A Young Women’s Alliance advocating for empowerment of girls and young women through economic empowerment activities, advocacy and capacity building

Eswatini Young Women’s Alliance (EYWA) is a Youth Organisation working on Sexual & Reproductive Health and Rights – including Gender Based Violence, HIV and AIDS, and Youth Engagement.

EYWA is a women’s empowerment and rights network, under the SADC gender protocol alliance. With the aim to curb youth unemployment in all spheres of the Kingdom of Eswatini both in rural and Urban areas of all four regions. As long as the organisation is well supported and gaining momentum with a vast number of members, it will keep on doing its mandate even for future generations to take over the flag. The mission of EYWA seeks to empower girls and young women through economic empowerment activities, advocacy and capacity building.

Young women living in Eswatini experience a wide variety of unique challenges as compared to their male counterparts, from sexual and reproductive health to economic opportunity to physical safety, all of which negatively impact their long-term development. Adolescent girls in particular struggle with issues related to their sexual and reproductive health, all of which have far-reaching consequences. There is a disturbing an undeniable link between the drivers of the HIV epidemic, disparities. We believe empowering young women will assist them to acquire more skills and knowledge to act independently and becoming models to other young women with similar challenges. This will then lead to a creation of a strong ESwatini’s first and only young female-specific collaboration platform acting jointly towards minimising all different challenges they come across.

ACTIVITIES

• Education and Training Department: EYWA will Liaise with various stakeholders. Participate in committees and working groups associated with education and training when required. Participate in the development of a yearly training and fellowships calendar. Evaluate the relevance and effectiveness of mentorship programs. Provide regular reports on all programmes. Attend staff, unit and other meetings as required. Support volunteers who assist in the work of the unit. Assist in cross-unit project activity and also assist with the general operations of the organisation.
• Media, Communication and Information Department: Develop various media and communications material including media releases, media responses, social media information, internal and external online and printed publications and marketing andpromotional materials. Prepare and deliver submissions, briefs, talking points, speeches and reports for a variety of settings. Ensure the corporate style guide is adhered to in all aspects of media, marketing and communication projects. Applies media and communications functional and technical knowledge and skills to perform the job at a high level of accomplishment. Establish and maintain effective relationships with internal and external clients in order to meet expectations and improve service delivery. Compile media content for UN and Special Day Commemoration.
• GBV, SRHR and HIV/ AIDS Department: Support organizations working in the GBV sector in developing and implementing promising practices to address gaps in supports for underserved groups of survivors in Eswatini. Build strategic alliances with other key actors internally and externally to advocate for gender-sensitive programming. Develop referral pathways for each specialized programme depending on the available services and the survivors’ needs. Ensure adequate project monitoring systems and evaluation procedures are in place applying appropriate tools in order to collect and update all progress indicators for the project.

RESULTS AND OUTCOMES

EYWA recently has a membership of about 100 young women acting as volunteers with, who were mobilized during conducted activation campaigns. The Organisation has more than 1000 followers after the creation of social media platforms on Facebook,Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter, where we showcase our events and updates and we are looking forward to gain even more followers as well as members. Campaigns conducted were a success even though at some point we work on zero budgets and depend on asking for donations. Promoting our organisation for good and better as we push our mandate and we are determined to be accountable and participate on our level best to meet our goals. More and more awareness campaigns are still to be conducted in accordance with activities and occasions allocated for different months. It worth mentioning that we are also able to collaborate with other organisations as partners during our campaign whom are able to

assist us financially and otherwise. We are still going to market our self’s hence opting for more partners even for future events.