WINDHOEK – The African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region 5 recently joined forces with the Association For International Sport for All (TAFISA) in embarking on its journey of mentoring and preparing more women to take up leadership positions at various federations and commissions of member states.
As a start, both organisations will be hosting the inaugural Women Leadership Train the Trainers seminar in Johannesburg, South Africa from the 22nd to 23rd of this month.
The seminar will be conducted under the theme “Empower one, Empower multitudes” and will extensively touch on AUSC Region 5’s Women Leadership Programme (WLP), which is aimed at increasing the number of women occupying leadership positions in the Region from the current 20 percent to 40 percent by 2028.
The seminar, meant to empower women and prepare them to assume leadership positions in sport, will equip women through Sport For All and mentorship in order to refine and sharpen women leaders’ skills and capacity to lead organisations.
The seminar is one of several collaborative efforts between AUSC Region 5 and TAFISA, a leading international Sport for All and physical activity umbrella organization, with over 300 members from more than 160 countries. TAFISA is officially recognized by UNESCO from whom funding to conduct the seminar was sourced.
The partnership between AUSC Region 5 and TAFISA is set to yield a Women Leadership Programme (WLP), which is a mentorship programme for women meant to use gender sensitive sport to train a new generation of young women in leadership.
The Train the Trainer seminar draws twenty participants (two women from each of the AUSC Region 5 Member Countries which are Angola, Botswana, and eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
These trainers will be expected to train and facilitate mentorship of 20 young women leaders between the ages of 18 and 35 in each of their respective countries, translating to a total of 200 women trained every year.
The multiplier effect of this programme aims to train and mentor a total of 2000 women leaders between 2019 and 2028, who will lead Sport for All and Gender mainstreaming mentorship programmes in their own countries together helping to build a network of women leaders in sport in the Region.
Each member country has been requested to identify two competent women trainers who will join the “Women Leadership Mentorship through Sport for All” programme.
The selected women will become custodians of the Women Leadership Programme to train other women in their own countries, multiplying the training effect in the whole Region. The participants were carefully selected in consultation with sport authorities in each country to be coordinators of the programme and to help improve young women leaders’ technical leadership capabilities. – Additional info: www.auscregion5.org.bw