Women Deliver is hosting global conferences that bring together people from across a multitude of sectors, issues, and cultures. Held every three years, Women Deliver conferences are fueling stations where organizations and individuals leave re-energized, knowledgeable, connected, and challenged to think outside the box.

The Women Deliver 2019 Conference took place on 3-6 June 2019 in Vancouver, Canada and was the world’s largest conference on gender equality and the health, rights, and wellbeing of girls and women in the 21st century. More than 8,000 world leaders, influencers, advocates, academics, activists, and journalists gathered in Vancouver with the drive to accelerate progress for girls and women everywhere.

The conference presented new knowledge, promoted world-class solutions, and engaged a broad spectrum of voices. It focused on several issues from health, nutrition, education, economic and political empowerment to human rights, good governance, and girls’ and women’s agency and equality.

What did YouAct get out of it? A chance to learn new approaches to the work we do on youth SRHR, to network with like-minded young people, to share our successes and struggles and to get some much needed inspiration on potential innovative solutions to our challenges. We are grateful that the network was represented by two members, Anamaria Suciu, Women Deliver Young Leader and Anuki Mosiashvili, member of the Women Deliver Youth Engagement Working Group.

Below are the sessions we actively participated in along with a brief description of the main take-aways.

Regional performance at the Young Leaders & Alumni Workshop, 2 June 2019

→ YouAct’s work on sexual and reproductive rights was highlighted, especially relevant given the current backlash on SRHR issues

Innovation, Solutions and Leadership in HIV and SRHR Integration: Young Advocates Speak, Part of Generation Now: Our Health, Our Rights Pre-Conference, 2 June 2019

→ Anamaria, YouAct Member and WD Young Leader presented the latest YouAct project funded by Generation Now, who brought young advocates face-to-face with Members of the European Parliament;

→ We believe in solidarity and we hope the toolkit we launched will support many other advocates to approach “The European Parliament, Our Ally in Advancing Comprehensive Sexuality Education”

Advancing Rights of Adolescent Girls and Young Women to be Decision-makers, Concurrent Session, 4 June 2019

→ Anuki, Member of YouAct and WD Youth Engagement Working Group told her story about how she started community-based activism in her municipality to change narratives around sexuality education in Georgia and how she ended up doing youth-led advocacy at the European Parliament in Brussels

→ Anuki highlighted many of the challenges young people face in her country and beyond and what are some potential solutions such as mapping the opportunities for change, advocacting at the national and regional decision-making institutions and consulting peers in the process;

Power of Community: Advocates from Europe, Special Event, 6 June 2019

→ YouAct and DSW co-facilitated this session aimed at bringing European advocates together to network, to identify common and specific goals and priorities and identify ways of collaborating as members of this community of practice;

→ This semi-structured networking space allowed for interesting discussions on how to claim back the moral ground given the increased use of rights-based arguments by the opposition

You can have a glimpse into the conference by watching this 4-minute video.