Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women
Women’s Learning Partnership
Culture-specific adaptations of Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women are currently available in: English, Maghreby-Arabic, Shamy-Arabic, Assamese, French, Hausa, Malay, Meiteilon, Persian, Russian, Shona, Spanish, Swahili, and Uzbek. Bahasa Indonesian, Kokborok, Portuguese, Turkish, and Tagalog editions are forthcoming.
The Leading to Choices manual is used to train diverse groups of women and girls in the practice of inclusive, participatory, and horizontal leadership. The goal is to empower women to take on leadership roles in their families, communities, and societies.
The manual is based on the premise that effective leadership relies on the ability to communicate, listen, build consensus, and work in partnership with allies to develop a collective vision and implement an action plan. Sharing power and respect creates a strong group identity that both empowers individuals to achieve personal goals and mobilizes the group for collective action.
Leading to Choices has been used in interactive training workshops with thousands of participants in more than 25 countries in the Global South, including women activists, academics, domestic workers, factory workers, NGO leaders, politicians, refugees, students, and indigenous women.
Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women (2001) (140 pages)
English Edition 0-9710922-0-6 $24.95
Authors: Mahnaz Afkhami, Ann Eisenberg, and Haleh Vaziri
In consultation with: Suheir Azzouni, Ayesha Imam, Amina Lemrini, and Rabèa Naciri
Leading to Choices, developed by the Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) in collaboration with its partner organizations in the Global South, is based on a conceptualization of leadership as horizontal, inclusive, and participatory. WLP views leadership as a process that leads to greater choices for all by fostering communication among individuals who learn from each other, create a shared vision, and reach a common goal forged by consensus. The alternative leadership model presented in the handbook responds to the need for leaders who aspire to create egalitarian, democratic, and pluralistic societies based on collaborative decision-making, coalition-building, and gender equality.
Leading to Choices features a contextual chapter, twelve workshop sessions, and an appendix containing culture-specific scenarios relevant to the cultivation of effective leadership skills. At the heart of each workshop session is a case study or scenario. These scenarios depict individuals who discovered personal leadership skills that enabled them to address a challenging situation in their community. The scenarios also feature the innovative work of organizations from around the world that emphasize participatory decision making and communication, both internally and with their target constituencies. The scenarios span the globe, from Jordan where attorney Asma Khader spearheads the campaign to eliminate gender violence in her country; to Brazil where NGO Communication, Education, and Information on Gender uses communication technologies as a vehicle for women to express themselves and promote gender equality; to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Afghan Institute of Learning works to educate, train, and empower Afghan women and children living in refugee camps; and to Nigeria, where BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights employs technology - from the copy machine to e-mail - to share information with women in sub-Saharan Africa and enhance their ability to participate fully in their communities. The sessions are organized as a progression in learning to encourage participants' involvement in decision making processes and to promote a participatory and dialogical leadership style.
Leading to Choices is a prototype handbook with a flexible curriculum that may be adapted and customized to suit the diverse cultural, political, and socio-economic needs of women and men around the world. Designed for use in interactive workshops, the handbook includes "Guidelines for Facilitating" that enable the user to create a stimulating environment that promotes mutual respect, dialogue, and collaboration. Leading to Choices has been used in leadership training workshops in Afghanistan, Brazil, Cameroon, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Tanzania, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. Participants have included women, young girls, and men; Muslims and Christians; and human rights activists, university students, women NGO representatives, refugees, and domestic workers, among others.
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