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The goals of the
Leadership Program are to:
- Strengthen women’s leadership abilities
- Increase their capacity to access community resources
- Assist women to identify their values and build allies across ethnicity for advocacy
The Leadership Program is based on ‘Training for Transformation,’ an approach to community development which focuses on “responsible, ethical, inclusive” methods of engaging community members. The Leadership Training gives participants tools and skills to understand, motivate and bring changes within themselves and their communities and the world. It is adapted from Paulo Freire’s teachings; one of which is that community change is dependent upon truly listening and experiencing other community members, not from transferring wisdom from leaders to followers.

The Leadership Development Training for Transformation uses a series of exercises, modules and tools to encourage participants to:
- Discover personal motivations, interpersonal skills and how to effectively use personal skills for community transformation
- Learn to listen to themes in regular conversations where people show strong emotions
- Learn to make connections between strong emotions and motivation or apathy
- Develop critical awareness of the root causes of community problems
- Learn to break through apathy and bring community transformation.
At the end of the training, participants have the skills to identify issues affecting their communities, to access community resources, to mobilize community members to organize and take action beginning with smaller, more achievable goals, which facilitates boosting morale and bringing communities together.
Refugee Women’s Network offers Leadership Development Training for Community Transformation for interested groups and organizations. Please contact RWN if you are interested to organize leadership training.

For more information, contact Sumaya Karimi, Leadership Program Coordinator, at 404-299-0180 x 229 or
leadership@riwn.org