About this project
This initiative brings together Women Peace Makers (WPM), Khmer Youth Association (KYA), and Plan International Germany to strengthen the leadership, participation, and rights of girls and young women in Cambodia. GISA empowers adolescent girls and young women in Stung Treng, Ratanakiri, and Siem Reap provinces as strong agents of change who overcome gender-specific barriers, contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality. The project combines gender-transformative education, youth leadership development, participatory learning, and community mobilization to support adolescent girls and young women to become active leaders and advocates within their communities. The initiative works closely with youth clubs, community volunteers, parents, local authorities, journalists, and civil society actors to strengthen awareness of gender equality and challenge harmful social norms. Through approaches including Champions of Change, Bell Sound performances, youth advocacy, community dialogue, and digital learning, girls and young women are supported to build confidence, leadership skills, and collective agency. The project also places strong emphasis on inclusion, particularly for Indigenous girls, ethnic minority communities, LGBTQI+ youth, and girls facing multiple forms of marginalization. The project connects community-level change with the people who tell Cambodia's stories, training female media professionals and citizen journalists so that girls and young women are represented fairly and heard publicly.
Current focus areas
- Leadership development and empowerment activities for adolescent girls and young women through youth clubs and peer learning spaces
- Community awareness raising on gender equality, girls' rights, gender-based violence, early marriage, and youth participation
- Implementation of Champions of Change and gender-transformative learning approaches with girls and boys, building girls' confidence, leadership, and knowledge of gender equality
- Bell Sound performances and participatory community theater addressing issues affecting youth and girls
- Training youth clubs in small grant management and supporting club-led community initiatives
- Development of digital learning tools and youth-friendly educational resources related to leadership and gender equality
- Facilitating intergenerational dialogues that bring young people and their parents into conversation about girls' education and futures
- Training core parents to lead village-level outreach on gender equality, early child marriage, gender-based violence, online child abuse, and positive parenting
- Strengthening gender-sensitive reporting through training and mentoring for female media professionals and citizen journalists, including on the Interministerial Prakas on the Code of Conduct for youth engaged in media
Emerging outputs
- Village outreach led by trained core parents, with WPM-supported meetings reaching over two thousand community members, most of them women, across more than a hundred villages
- Core parents recognized for their commitment and increasingly leading awareness activities independently, in cooperation with commune child protection focal points
- Bell Sound performances and public engagement activities addressing social norms and discrimination
- A network of female media professionals and citizen journalists better equipped for gender-sensitive reporting, connected to mentors in provincial information departments and the Women's Media Centre
- Youth club initiatives conceived and implemented by the clubs themselves, such as community awareness campaigns on school dropout and early child marriage
- Participatory learning documentation and reflection materials capturing youth experiences and community change