The Federation of African Women Educationists (FAWE) held its 7th General Assembly on 30 – 31 July with the theme: Advancing girls’ education: scaling up FAWE’s successful models. The focus of the event was on strategies to achieve the replication and mainstreaming of FAWE’s successful models for girls’ schooling in education systems across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The event was held at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, on Monday, 28 July 2008. The reports and thematic presentations, including the presentation of FAWE’s 2008-2012 Strategic Plan, highlighted how FAWE has addressed the key issues in the promotion of girls’ education over the past three years, how the organization aims to leverage its strengths to achieve the replication and mainstreaming of its successful models in education systems across the region, and the emerging challenges in the sector that will provide new strategic focus areas for FAWE over the coming years.
Two sub-regional assemblies of FAWE National Chapters held in June in Mali and Rwanda laid the groundwork for the General Assembly. The National Chapters discussed the results and impact of their work in implementing FAWE’s gender-responsive models in the three years since the last FAWE General Assembly, as well as strategies for the future. Each Chapter presented an implementation report on the models undertaken by country, with particular focus on the Gender-Responsive School–Centre of Excellence model, the Tuseme [Let Us Speak Out] youth empowerment model, the Gender-Responsive Pedagogy model, and the Science, Mathematics and Technology programme.
The General Assembly is the supreme governing body of FAWE. It meets once every three years and brings together FAWE’s highly influential members, among them African women ministers in charge of national education systems, women vice-chancellors of universities and other senior women education policy-makers and advocates.
The functions of the General Assembly are to review the role and structure of FAWE; consider proposals on the organization’s policies and objectives; receive and deliberate on triennial and other reports and proposals from the Executive Committee; elect the members of the Executive Committee; and approve the admission of new members into FAWE as proposed by the Executive Committee.
During the General Assembly, full members of FAWE were elected to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee is the other governing body of FAWE. It is made up of 11 members from various sub-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa who meet twice a year. Its members are elected by the General Assembly by secret ballot, each candidate having been proposed and seconded by bona fide full members of FAWE. Members of the Executive Committee hold office for terms of three years and can serve for no more than two consecutive terms.
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