Power. Progress. Change. These are the key words of the Women Deliver 2019 Conference. Dance4Life is excited to join thousands of advocates, colleagues and partners at this conference in Vancouver, 3-6 June 2019. We look forward to learning from others, getting inspired, and exchanging experiences. We are also sharing our own innovative Journey4Life model which brings out young people’s own power to achieve personal, professional and societal progress and change for a world where all young people are healthy.
New collaborations
As a social franchise, we are nothing without our strong and growing network of franchisees: our impact and scale depends entirely on their skills, knowledge and buy-in for our model. Colleagues Koen and Anna will be attending four days of sessions, visiting booths, listening to inspirational talks and success stories from others, promises to give us plenty of new ideas and discussions to reflect on and take up in our work, as well as lots of opportunities to explore collaboration with partners across the world.
Side event Right Here Right Now
Dance4Life will coordinate one of the partner side-events on the first day of the conference, Sunday June 2nd. The Right Here Right Now (RHRN) partnership side-event highlights the work of several RHRN countries – Uganda, Senegal, Nepal and Guyana – and offer lots of room for interaction with the participants. Dance4Life’s Robin and Rekha will moderate the session to create an inclusive and lively event. Next to the side-event the conference offers a great opportunity to connect with youth advocates from diverse RHRN countries, to hear from them how they experience being a youth advocate in a global partnership. Furthermore we are happy to see that there is a huge youth focus: the youth zone, the youth pre-conference and the collaboration with members of the Youth Engagement working group of Women Deliver.
Trainers4Life
Two Trainers4Life from our international pool of trainers will be attending Women Deliver! Rekha Trikhatri is from Kathmandhu, Nepal and is ready to travel to Canada for the first time to engage with youth around meaningful youth engagement and social inclusion. Sherifa Awudu is from Tamale, Ghana and is also a Women Deliver Young Leader eager to step into this conference focused on the power of youth. At the Prevention+ Breakfast side event on 3rd June, from 6-8 am, Sherifa will be presenting the Gender Tranformative Toolkit and facilitating a session on one of the activities from the toolkit. A Rutgers mini event will take place on Thursday 6th from 12.45-13.30, she will facilitate the Powerwalk activity. Rekha and Sherifa will will keep you updated on the twitter of Dance4Life.
Rekha: “As part of the Trainers4Life community I feel really proud to represent my team and Dance4Life at Women Deliver. I am very excited to facilitate one of our activities from the Journey4Life called My Boundaries which was created by our team of youth advocates. I want to leave our print in every one of the people’s hearts, who will be curious about our work and mission.”
Side event Get Up Speak Out
Together with the Get Up Speak Out partnership, our two Dance4Life master trainers Sherifa and Rekha from Nepal will facilitate the ‘Boundaries’ exercise from the Dance4Life empowerment model. During this activity, individuals will become more aware of their personal boundaries, learn about the boundaries of others and the role of gender norms in defining and communicating these. Besides this, participants will discuss how to tackle ‘less positive’ gender norms to further empower girls and women in the communities we work with. This activity will also showcase the activities and objectives of the GUSO partnership. To get our personal insights and to see what Koen, Robin, Anna, and our Trainers4Life Rekha and Sherifa are up to, follow us on Twitter @dance4lifeint.
