Leading to Choices
          A
        Leadership 
         Training
        Handbook 
          for
         Women
                       LEADING TO CHOICES
                    Leadership is the ability to implement dreams.
                           – Workshop participant
         Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women will be a
         valuable tool for women’s empowerment all over the world. While it reflects important
         ideas about leadership from other sources, it combines them with new insights in a way
         uniquely accessible and useful to women. In particular, no other such manual I have
         seen offers itself to self-adaptation and self-application by people of all kinds (including
         men), respecting the diversity of their needs and situations. Furthermore the non-
         authoritarian approach of the book models the very kind of leadership it recommends.
                       – Nancy Flowers, author and human rights educator
         I have now come to understand that even ‘ordinary’ women can be leaders, and this
         is very empowering.
                       – Literacy teacher in a Morocco leadership workshop
         If we don’t see ourselves as leaders and are not discussed in the literature as leaders,
         then how will others see us as leaders?
                       – Domestic worker in a Jordan leadership workshop
         In this training, I found that I have leadership skills that I did not know I had before.
                       – Young woman in a Palestine leadership workshop
         If all of civil society looks at leadership in this way and evaluates and participates with
         others in discussing how leadership is going to open up participation and choice, then
         many of our problems will be solved.
                       – Male participant in a Jordan leadership workshop
         I realized I had visions inside of me that I could achieve and I was empowered to go
         ahead and achieve them.
                       – Woman activist in a Nigeria leadership workshop
         I believe Leading to Choices is a seminal work that will greatly impact the field of
         women’s human rights and empowerment. . . . It will help more than one generation
         of women think of themselves as leaders within their own societies and cultures. This is
         what I hope to achieve for Afghan women and girls through a collaborative program
         with WLP in Pakistan. . . . The leadership handbook that WLP has created in partnership
         with other NGOs in the Global South is an invaluable model for participatory and
         collaborative leadership training and capacity building. 
                       – Sakena Yacoobi, founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning
          LEADING TO CHOICES
                     A LEADERSHIP
               TRAINING HANDBOOK
                      FOR WOMEN
                           Mahnaz Afkhami
                            Ann Eisenberg
                             Haleh Vaziri
                             in consultation with
                              Suheir Azzouni
                              Ayesha Imam
                              Amina Lemrini
                              Rabéa Naciri
                                     Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights,
                                          Development,and Peace (WLP)
                                       4343 Montgomery Avenue, Suite 201 
                                            Bethesda, MD 20814, USA
                                     Tel: 1-301-654-2774/Fax: 1-301-654-2775
                                       Email: wlp@learningpartnership.org
                                        Web: www.learningpartnership.org
                                              in collaboration with
                                           Association Démocratique 
                                         des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM)
                                                                          o
                                    Secteur les Orangers, Rue Mokla, Villa N 2
                                                 Rabat, Morocco 
                                      Tel: 212-37-737165/Fax: 212-37-260813 
                                             Email: adfm@mtds.com
                                       BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights
                                    232A Muri Okunola Street, P.O. Box 73630 
                                          Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria 
                                               Tel: 234-1-320-0484
                                             Tel/Fax: 234-1-262-6267 
                                        Email: baobab@baobabwomen.org
                                  Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC)
                                       Awad Bldg., Radio Street, 2nd Floor
                                                 P.O. Box 2197 
                                           Ramallah, Palestine via Israel 
                                               Tel: 970-2-298-7783
                                               Fax: 970-2-296-4746 
                                           Email: watcorg@palnet.com
                                             Web: www.pal-watc.org
                ©
                 2001
                by Women’s Learning Partnership 
                for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP)
                ISBN 0-9710922-0-6
                Design: Xanthus Design
                Illustration: Avish Khebrehzadeh
                Copy Editing: Castle Pacific Publishing