About Us

Vision

Women living in Peace and re-creating Peace

Mission

To ignite women’s leadership, amplifying voices and deepen their activism in re-creating Peace

2013 – 2014 Outlook

STRATEGIC VISION 1: Increased Collaboration, Agenda Setting and Knowledge Sharing.

Research and knowledge generation is the core of Isis- WICCE programming.

During this new strategic period 2013 -2017, we will work with feminist academic institutions (and not just individual academics as has been the case) so that our research is more rigorous, with a stronger political analytical approach. The research findings will continue to inform our work, and will also be used in teaching, dialogue and in informing policy. We will also use existing data to identify critical issues, recurrent themes and the debates and interventions surrounding them. We will use the same data to identify gaps in available knowledge and information. The process will enable us to build a valuable entry point for placing women’s issues at centre stage of international action. The findings will guide us as we chart an alternative vision in the field of women, peace and human security.

STRATEGIC VISION 2: Strengthened Women’s Leadership and Political Participation.

During the skills enhancement, we intentionally instil and nurture women leaders’ capacities to resist and ultimately transform power – in all its relations, structures, forms, spaces, and places. Diversity of participants generates important educational benefits because it brings them in contact with those different from themselves and gives them the experience of living in and learning from a diverse and collaborative community. Our intention is to encourage activists to think, learn and act together on specific issues. Note that learning to work with diversities is particularly important in rebuilding societies in which exclusion and marginalization of large sections of the populace are cited among the root causes of conflicts such as in the case of Liberia, Rwanda and Sudan, Nepal, Kashmir and Pakistan.

We are cognizant that women’s experiences and perspectives vary according to ethnicities, race, class, sexualities, caste, religion, and location and culture. In this strategic plan, we intend to broaden the participants so that as many diversities as possible are included.

Strategic Vision 3: Increased Communication and Knowledge Management for Connections, Visibility and Influence.

Rationale:
Our communication centre is foundational to excellence in virtually all departments and programs. It is the core facility for all the stakeholders who in particular need access to information on various topics.
During this strategic period Isis-WICCE will tap into the new media possibilities. We envisage a virtual information hub that will act as a gate way for current, relevant and highly synchronised information that keeps our users engaged and informed. By sharing this knowledge widely our key stakeholders can leverage much greater change. We will seek to inform and influence the global debate on women, peace and security while being vital reference points for key players in areas such as policy and academia.

We shall therefore closely manage the information coming out of the research and skills building by producing packages that can be shared out in various formats while at the same time supporting the entire Isis-WICCE team and amplifying its advocacy initiatives.
We therefore foresee a women connect centre that is highly interactive, providing a conducive environment to the patrons and maintaining linkages with other knowledge and information centres around the globe.

STRATEGIC VISION 4: Restored Women’s Bodily Integrity And Dignity

Rationale
Our bodies are our primary means of participating socially, economically, politically, spiritually and creatively in society. They are the beginning point of the practical application of rights; the place in which rights are exercised, and for women in particular, the place where rights are most often violated. Without knowledge of and control over our bodies, including our sexuality, women’s rights can be neither fully exercised nor enjoyed.(Feminist Africa, Issue 6, 2006).

We work in a context where conduct of governance and the state in Africa and other countries still operates within the (false) public/ private dichotomy that continues to perpetuate the myth that women and ‘their politics’ is designated to the private sphere. Thus even attempts to address questions of sexual violence in particular are framed within a lens that situates these as private acts of violence even while occurring in the public domain.

Healing, which will be referred to as medical intervention in our programmes, is a product of an Approach that gives substantial meaning and validation to the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’. Its part of our integrated approach as already discussed. The healing aspect of the model comes from the realisation that the body which has been damaged by the sexual violence and other ghastly atrocities has to be restored, for women to be whole again and thereby participate in rebuilding themselves and the community at large. Healing then becomes a pre-requisite for any peace building initiatives.

Isis-WICCE has trained a core group of medical personnel, that has grown to appreciate that a woman’s body is political and healing must be political too. These doctors have in turn trained doctors in Liberia and South Sudan.

In this strategic plan, we plan to build the Health intervention as our starlight programme. This is mostly because it’s a programme that demands a lot of resources and specialized skills. It needs its own space so that it can reap the benefits of co-creation through continuous engagement platforms which multiple types of stakeholders can plug into. The seamlessly connecting experiences across the different technical and political platforms of engagement and the new capabilities they are likely to unleash will enrich this programme. The key is the capacity to experiment, learn and execute with support from a variety of stakeholders.

STRATEGIC VISION 5: Scaled Up Funding, Enhanced Marketing And Communications Strategies.

Rationale
We have grown rapidly and with resilience. This has created the momentum for us to take a quantum leap in size and influence; the moment for bold action and for scaling up the resources and our impact is now when we are still encouraged and energised by our successes.

Numerous factors are aligned to support this increased growth, impact and influence, including: a global context in which the role of women in peace building process is slowly being recognised.

Our current structure and systems are not adequate to carry the weight of the current strategic plan. We must put in place additional human, financial and technical resources to enhance the successful implementation of our work. This practically means that we need additional resources, space and equipment to ensure that this strategy happens. Practically, the secretariat must have personnel and financial resources to hold this together. We also must strengthen our planning, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms so that we can measure our impact, growth and relevance as we work.

STRATEGC VISION 6: Strengthened Organisational Development and Stewardship

Rationale:
At the forefront of the strategic plan is the development of skills of board and staff to ensure successful implementation of the strategic plan; fulfilment of fiscal and fiduciary responsibility, management of the business of ISIS WICCE, and establishment of steps to achieve smooth transitions in board and staff alike.

Stewardship refers to processes and structures that manage, allocate, and monitor resources that are crucial to fulfilling our mission. We (staff and board) are stewards of ISIS-WICCE and our obligations is to act in ways that are responsive to the interests and needs of the communities that we serve and of our allies