BURMA: YWCA of Myanmar Empowering Young Women

Women in Myanmar face barriers to living informed and healthy lives. Myanmar is plagued with a lack of education on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), HIV and gender based violence. Cultural taboos, language barriers and vast expanses of rural areas pose a great challenge in spreading vital information, especially to young women.

The YWCA of Myanmar is addressing this gap in knowledge and access to information, and has made a "tremendous effort in many communities to raise issues of gender equality and to take leadership in a country transitioning to a new democracy. The YWCA is to be commended for being committed and supporting young women's leadership and taking an intergenerational approach in sharing knowledge and building a stronger women's movement. When we visited in November it was a pleasure to be welcomed by a room filled with young women supported by Kywe Daw Aye their General Secretary and Rebecca Tapa the President of the YWCA of Myanmar," said Juli Dugdale, World YWCA Global Programme Manager for Women's Leadership and Movement Building.

With the help of the World YWCA Power to Change Fund, the YWCA of Myanmar offered workshops to more than 50 young women on topics ranging from: team work, conflict management, basic office management, time management, information technology, to SRHR and HIV, gender and life skills. It is expected that these young women will in turn train others and thus spread the knowledge they gained at the YWCA.

The YWCA of Myanmar organised several workshops, including one on vocational secretarial training for young women providing them with knowledge in administration and office management skills. A one-day workshop on intergenerational and shared leadership was also organised, as was a three-day awareness training on SRHR and HIV. These workshops prepared the young women to become trainers and peer educators and they returned to their communities to share the knowledge gained.

A training of trainers (TOT) on sexual and reproductive health, gender, HIV and life skills was organised for 10 young women, who created a manual to help others to understand the issues and facilitate on-going training in other communities.

These YWCA projects have created a pool of empowered young women leaders. One young woman that benefitted from the training said: "I knew nothing about SRHR. In my community there is a real lack of awareness about SRHR as it is not culturally acceptable to discuss sexual health issues. Most of the young women are unemployed. Even the married women are not comfortable to discuss these issues." This young woman has now become a peer educator as well as a TOT trainer. She delivers trainings in her community and at her local YWCA, promoting responsible sexual behaviour and increasing access to sexuality education and methods of preventing sexually transmitted infections and HIV infection.

En of last year, for the first time in Myanmar, 100 women from different organisations came together for a Women Leaders' Dialogue, which was held in Pathein. This event was organised by the YWCA of Pathein with the aim of creating a women's network. This one-day dialogue offered a space where women could talk freely and safely on topics of their choice, focusing especially on sexual violence, discrimination, rape and domestic violence. The participants shared their experiences and stories and they agreed upon the importance of having a safe space where they can discuss the problems and abuses that they face.

The impacts of activities such as the ones in Myanmar, clearly demonstrate how Power to Change projects are helping YWCAs around the world to resolve challenges and inequalities that women face daily.