Comprising two main components - capacity building and leadership - the University of Excellence is Speak Up Africa's solution of choice for empowering girls and women in French-speaking Africa.
Through this inclusive programme, the University of Excellence aims to amplify the voices of community-based organisations led by women and girls and to equip them to advocate effectively for improved health policies in their respective communities.
Whether they focus on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, gender-based violence, climate action or sexual and reproductive health, we must collectively strengthen the representation of women and girls in national decision-making bodies.
The customized training program will enable selected women's and girls' organizations in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Senegal to strengthen their organizational, leadership, advocacy and communication skills.
The Leadership Programme is a learning and networking platform to advocate for gender equality in leadership and positively influence the narrative around women and girls in health decision-making spaces
Following a rich but simple process, we engaged all the beneficiaries of the Essential Voices Fund to determine a baseline and design a training programme tailored to their needs. We then developed five main modules, which form the basis of our Essential Voices capacity building programme:
This module focuses on the norms and regulations governing grassroots organisations in our three target countries in order to strengthen women's and girls' understanding of the institutional framework governing their actions in health promotion.
This module reviews the essential components of health advocacy, from defining strategic objectives to designing and evaluating the impact of a comprehensive influencing strategy
This module strengthens organizations' communication skills, both for advocacy and for capitalizing on their achievements. In recent years, the focus has been on digital communication, enabling organizations to produce more qualitative content using accessible tools.
This module looks at the process and components of strategic thinking, the concepts and methods of knowledge management and the different components of a monitoring and evaluation system
This module aims to equip the members of the initiative to implement a resource mobilisation process, including planning, identification, engagement of partners, negotiation, and finally monitoring and managing partners.
This module provides members of the initiative with the essential skills to deepen their understanding of our financial context, governance, accountability, resource management, planning, budgeting, and performance management and measurement.
Our experience has shown that creating a learning framework based on collective intelligence is a key to success for this type of initiative. Our aim is to build a cohort of learners who develop new skills together and support each other throughout the programme.
Voix EssentiELLES aims to raise awareness of the importance of leadership skills for women and girl-led community organisations to the widest possible audience
The Leadership Programme is a learning and networking platform for the cause of gender equality and positively influencing the narrative around the participation of women and girls in decision-making spaces. To this end, we are facilitating a series of face-to-face and online workshops with experts whose skills and experience sharing are useful to women and girl-led community organisations in our region. By giving them free access to a wide range of expertise, our workshops/webinars provide a space for discussion and exchange with high added value for our civil society partners.
This leadership track builds on the skills acquired in the first track on Capacity Building and exposes women and girls to tangible examples of advocacy from across the Francophone region. While showing that success is within reach with our experts, we emphasise financial inclusion programmes, the specific needs of vulnerable people, the importance of media engagement, and key leadership concepts such as :
How to behave when faced with difficult situations.
Basic public speaking techniques.
Self-confidence
The first cohort of the University of Excellence mentoring program brought together three EssentiELLES Voices from Burkina Faso, already members of national and local decision-making bodies: the National Coordination Committee (CCM), the Parliament and the Town Hall.
The program offered these leaders tailor-made support to strengthen their posture, their capacity for influence and their impact as women committed to public policy.
In 2025, a second cohort will be launched, extending the program to the five Voix EssentiELLES countries. It will support two mentees per country, i.e. ten women leaders involved in power or advocacy. They will benefit from personalized support to deepen their strategic skills, strengthen their collective leadership and establish themselves as key agents of change within their communities and institutions.
Download
