Gabrielle McKenzie, a disability rights advocate in Guyana, noticed that students with disabilities weren’t being taught about sexual health, unlike students in mainstream schools. After participating in IFES’s Youth ALLIES program, she designed and implemented workshops at five different schools about sexual and reproductive health. Gerard Ivalaoa, a student in Papua New Guinea, mobilized young people in his community to participate and engage in the electoral process. Participating in IFES’s Youth SPACE program, he still organizes meetings about how to engage in the political process with the group of young people he met. IFES is celebrating young people like Gerard and Gabrielle this International Youth Day on August 12. Read more about the positive impact on global democracy by these changemakers. Upcoming event: On August 30, join IFES and Kimpact Development Institute (KDI), a youth-focused nonprofit in Nigeria, for a workshop focused on identifying ways that young people can lead and participate in civic education. RSVP here. In the news: The Guyana Times highlighted IFES’s USAID-funded Youth ALLIES program, offering a virtual leadership training for the first time. |
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NETWORK SPOTLIGHT: JUSTICE MATA TUATAGALOA Justice Mata Tuatagaloa is the first woman judge in American Samoa, appointed to the District Court in 2011 and to the Supreme Court in 2015. She’s one of the few women in the Pacific region who have broken through the glass ceiling to achieve a judicial appointment. Earlier this year, she gathered with other judges from the Pacific Islands in Auckland, New Zealand, as part of the Pacific Electoral Justice Network. We spoke with Justice Tuatagaloa about her experience as a woman judge in the region and how she will carry the knowledge from this network forward into her own work.
Read the Q&A FOCUS GROUP SPOTLIGHT: PARTICIPATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN ELECTIONS Ahead of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, read IFES’s new analysis of three focus group discussions conducted by groups in Kenya, Guatemala, and Nepal that fight for the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including women and persons with disabilities.
Explore our findings IFES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN In the news: Guatemala’s second round of its presidential election will take place later this month after the first round in July. Máximo Zaldívar, Americas Regional Director, appeared on Razon de Estado to speak about the judicialization around elections all over Latin America and on Guatemala Visible to discuss Guatemala’s electoral system. |
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