Collaborator Profile
Industry / Sector: Non-Profit
The World YWCA is a global women’s rights organisation engaging millions of women, young women, and girls around the world each year, across cultures and beliefs, to transform lives and the world for the better. With a presence in over a hundred countries, their work is grassroots-driven, grounded in local communities and rooted in the transformational power of women.
The World YWCA provides support and opportunities for women, young women, and girls to become leaders and changemakers who not only protect their rights and impact their communities, but inspire their peers to do the same.
The World YWCA is focussed on building a strong, intergenerational network of women and young women leaders, with programmes led by and for women and young women in response to the unique needs they see in their communities.
Challenge
The World YWCA’s goal is that by 2035, 100 million young women and girls transform power structures to create justice, gender equality, human dignity, freedom, a sustainable environment, and a world free from violence and war, leading a vital YWCA movement, inclusive of all.
Prism partnered with the World YWCA on a number of projects and initiatives to develop leadership and build on the collective power of women leaders of all generations. These projects are anchored in grounded theory and have practical applications that fosters connections, shared learning and mutual exchange between leaders of all ages and backgrounds. We know that true equality does not exist if it is not inclusive of everyone, so we work to activate and restore agency to women and girls regardless of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ability, social economic status, sexuality, or gender expression.
The Process
The World YWCA Feminist Consultation Methodology (FCM) moves away from traditional research methods of evidence gathering, focusing on diverse, democratic, and decolonised approaches. The FCM is framed as the spark for transformative justice to help foster resiliency within the movement. By applying a feminist lens to gender- disaggregated data collection and analysis, this Methodology helps uncover insights to drive collective action. This toolkit was developed to empower and enable the full participation of women leaders to conduct informed consultation and research methodology in a female-centric framing that prioritises the sharing of power that tackles oppressive systems.
The Our Spaces, Power Spaces – A Safe Spaces Guide is built upon the World YWCA’s legacy of a feminist movement in offering women, young women, and girls a space of refuge that is beyond the traditional four walls definition of ‘space’ to include modern day ‘space’ in the digital sphere. A ‘YWCA Safe Space’ aims to create an accessible and inclusive environment where participants feel safe, valued, supported, and empowered. It is a gathering where people of all backgrounds—especially women, young women, and girls, who often face greater barriers to opportunities and resources—can come together to connect, learn, and engage.
Developed toolkits amplifies the World YWCA’s work to secure buy-in from stakeholders. This included a compelling Case for Support that centres the stories of the feminist movement as well as a consistent brand and a comprehensive Branding Guide that was launched at the 2023 World Council Meeting. These tools are used for advocacy of the movement and to scale impact.
Impact & Learnings
Through comprehensive design narrative and research methodology, the Safe Spaces and Feminist Consultation Methodology empowers women of multi faith, cross denominational, border, boundary, and digital environments to collaborate, empower, and participate safely in restoring the balance of power through research, accountability, and community. By building an essential toolbox for safety and research women regain their agency, dignity, and respect through understanding systems of power and oppression.
The Safe Spaces Guide leads readers through our recommendations for structuring an effective Safe Spaces gathering. We believe that by incorporating the Defining Standards in these spaces, participants can engage in activities and conversations that lead to individual and collective transformative change.
World YWCA continues to support the world’s intergenerational and intersectional community of women—supporting them to courageously advance a global movement of dignity and justice for all.
This is foundational work for the Secretariat as it fuels the gender equity movement on the global scale and transforms the lives of women and girls for the better.
Testimonial
“Working with Prism has been a pleasure. They are not just strategic in their approach but also highly systematic and organised in how they approach working on different projects. The team spends time deep diving the needs of a project in a very organised manner, asking all the right questions. This helps them understand the project’s needs, the organisation’s approach and the deliverables expectations very well. Until now, we have worked with them on four initiatives, and we have never been disappointed with how they approach every project we collaborate with them on. The team brings diverse skills, being very inclusive in their approach to every project, content and design. Be it a long-term project like our Feminist Consultation Methodology editorial support or our Safe Spaces rework of guide, or a strategy and design document like the branding guide for one of our leadership initiatives, their skills shine around listening, truly bringing out the best from the team they interacted within our organisation. Anyone looking to collaborate on innovative initiatives and new and coming intersectional work will enjoy working and engaging with the team at Prism X Strategy! It has been a pleasure knowing them as powerful feminist women leading good work.”
-Dr. Suchi Gaur, Director – Global Engagement and Impact
