Young Women’s Academy (YWA)
Adapting our Academy of Conscious Change model for the break between high school graduation and university enrollment, YWA provided young women with an opportunity to become change leaders in their own villages. Through inner work, compassionate attunement to community needs, and leveraging personal assets, participants deepened their sense of self as future leaders by initiating social enterprises. By catalyzing young women leaders, Global Grassroots created an underlying culture of collaboration, equitable involvement, and female empowerment – paving the way for future generations of women to be seen as change agents and innovators in their communities.
YWA participants tended to focus on critical issues facing girls and their future, including teen pregnancy; sex education, reproductive health, and family planning; domestic violence; child marriage; girls’ education; child nutrition; prostitution; domestic violence; depression; street children, cancer, and more. Through our intensive experiential leadership curriculum, they acquired important educational, professional, and life skills that enabled them to design their own social justice venture, heal from trauma, develop social-emotional intelligence, and step into their capacity as self-aware leaders. We provided seed funding for their ventures, high-engagement support, and a partial university scholarship upon graduating from our program.
“We celebrate the 246 young women from Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and South Sudan who participated in YWA between 2006 and 2023. They have launched 164 ventures and reached thousands of community members with their mindful, creative, and compassionate leadership!”
Young Women’s Alumni Engagement Project (YWAEP)
In 2020, Global Grassroots launched a new phase of its YWA programming called the Young Women’s Alumni Engagement Project (YWAEP). Designed as a mindful leadership support network for YWA graduates, YWAEP offered continuing education in Conscious Social Change and an accelerator grant program for alumni who wanted to expand or replicate their YWA ventures. From 2021-2023, five young women received seed grants to continue evolving their social change efforts in East Africa.