Core Strategies

Ethiopia is a patriarchal society with men highly dominant in the political, economic and social spheres at all levels. This deep-rooted negative attitude and negative impacts towards women and girls, thereof has to be addressed to bring them into the mainstream of society. All stakeholders have to aggressively mobilize the community / society and raise awareness to bring change on the existing gender inequality and empower women and girls. Government policies and social attitude towards women and girls have to be returned not only to create enabling environment and opportunity to women and girls but also avoid barriers limiting them enjoying their basic rights. Building the capacity of women and girls as well as their associations to deal with existing challenges and create demanding individuals and groups and gain equitable benefits, as citizens. Societies and women’s associations need to monitor the implementation and the gaps of existing national policies, laws and plans as well as the adapted international conventions.

Hence, as a national network of women and as enshrined in the Five-Year Strategic Plan (2020-2024), opting to see gender equality, women empowerment, and ending gender-based violence (GBV) / Violence Against Women & Girls (VAWG), NEWA has set the following thematic priorities and core strategies:

NEWA‘s four thematic priorities:

Advancing women's rights - prevention, provision and promotion
Strengthening member's capacity and joint up linkage with national, regional & global allies
Policy monitoring document and disseminate
Governance and management for organizational effectiveness

The seven strategic objectives:

STRATEGIC APPROACHES:

Capacity Building

Ending Violence against women and girls is becoming one of NEWA’s important strategic objectives. In order to achieve this objective, NEWA uses various strategies. Capacity building is one of the main strategies identified to end violence against women and girls.

NEWA has skilled leaders and professionals that are actively building their knowledge and skills. Capacity building is an ongoing process. Staff and management capacity building should be given due attention. In order to effectively build the capacity of the staff and management, sha has conducted capacity assessment, has developed improvement plan and also has managed the staff performance on regular basis. Besides, maintaining gender balance of NEWA staff and promoting Reward Management System should also be emphasized.

Researches & Policy Development

In order to design and implement evidence-based interventions, it is vital to undertake research on various issues. The findings of various researches help to design and implement tailored interventions. Besides, the research findings are used to advocate for the development of policies and also to create awareness.

Developing new and/or revising the existing policies are crucial for the enhancement of conducive policy and legislative environment. Research is one of the means to identify basic inputs for policy development. Accordingly, policy development was identified as one of the important strategies to enhance conducive policy and legislative environment.

Partnership & Networking

Building partnership with organizations working on gender-based violence is one the vital strategy to address the issue of gender-based violence in Ethiopia. The issue of gender-based violence is multifaceted and needs sectorial collaboration. Consequently, in order to enhance Women and vulnerable groups’ rights to prevent and respond to gender and other forms of Violence, NEWA builds strong partnership with like-minded organizations.

Awareness Raising

Awareness-raising is a fundamental component of primary prevention strategies aiming at:

changing attitudes, behaviors and beliefs that normalize and tolerate gender violence among general public;
preventing women from becoming victims or perpetrators of abusive relationships; and
informing women and especially victims and perpetrators about the resources available to tackle
the problem.

Awareness-raising campaigns are recognized as the most efficient and effective means of communicating information especially to the general public. They can meet all the above mentioned objectives, emphasizing the fact that gender violence is not a private matter, but an unacceptable violation of human rights. Awareness raising is a two-way street, fostering communication and information exchange in order to improve mutual understanding as well as mobilizing communities and the whole society to bring about the necessary change in attitudes and behavior

Advocacy

NEWA is seeking to create synergy and stronger advocacy voice for women’s advancement; She became an Ethiopian Consortium, with Ethiopian Societies committed to advocacy for women rights.

NEWA’s goal is twofold: synchronizing the individual activities of women associations into an integrated collective effort and synergy to realize their common aspirations for gender equality, and launching a vigorous public campaign of promotion, advocacy, and lobbying for women’s rights.

NEWA struggles to advocate for the enhancement of women and girls in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls both in urban and rural settings and advocates the support of women’s networks in the form of resources, top leadership advocacy, and openness to learning to advance the leadership development of women;

Lobbying

As part of our vision to make women a visible force for change in Ethiopia, we are actively lobbying and campaigning on issues that affect women. Despite Ethiopian equality legislation, women continue to face barriers, we are disadvantaged in economic, political and social life and we are not properly protected from gender based violence.

NEWA works with politicians, policy makers and influencers to advocate for law and policy that promotes women’s rights and equality and for services that meet women’s needs. We take a participative, grassroots approach to this work – all women have the right to be involved in decision-making and we aim to amplify the voices of the women who engage with the women’s sector. The Women’s Sector Lobbyist is available to any grassroots women’s group that wants to learn more about how to lobby and campaign for changes in their community that matter to them as women. We also provide the secretariat for the Women’s Policy Group which is a platform for women working in policy and advocacy roles in different organisations to share their work and speak with a collective voice on key issues.