What we do
The Women 4 Women mentoring and solidarity network is a safe space to exchange, learn, talk, share doubts and challenges, find common solutions and build reciprocal support. It would also facilitates working together and jointly strategize to strengthen women’s roles in ILC network at all levels.
The ILC’s Women 4 women - ILC Mentoring and Solidarity Network is part of our efforts to make ILC gender-just. This includes promoting women’s leadership and support women to play more significant roles in ILC member organisations. This network builds upon the main strength of ILC: the diversity of its members. Hence, it also aims at reinforcing the connection among women within ILC members. Mentees and mentors are the primary target for dedicated training opportunities and are actively involved in Gender Justice sessions organised during ILC events.
The key for a successful mentoring relationship is the patience to build a new relationship and the openness to understand different perspectives, because women’s challenges cross borders, but they can also be context and culture sensitive.
Built around the principle of mentoring and solidarity, Women 4 Women has been launched in 2019 as a flexible tool for mutual exchange and collaboration, based on reciprocity. The network has grown responding to specific needs
of women’s participants and to the changes that occurred along the evolution of the process of mentoring.
Along the last 5 years Women 4 Women included individual mentoring, in one-to-one (or on-to-two) relationship, and group mentoring. Both based on matching of needs and expertise.
The network evolved from cross-regional (although homogenous in terms of language) – with the intent of facilitating inter-regional and cross-regional exchange- to regionally homogenous groups. The evolution of the network took into account the feedback received by the women involved.
Women 4 Women run on a yearly basis from 2019 until 2024, building upon existing ILC meetings and encouraging women’s participation in ILC events. Among the most significant the Global learning exchange on “Weaving Knowledge and Resistance, that reunited 40 women from ILC membership in Turbaco (Colombia) (June 2024) of which several where also part of the 2023/24 cohort of Women 4 Women .
Join the 2026 cycle
Are you ready to learn, grow, and share experiences within a vibrant, women-only in-house mentoring and solidarity network? Women 4 Women (W4W) is open to any woman who works or volunteers for an ILC member organization. The programme creates a safe and dynamic space for collective learning, mutual support, and leadership development across the ILC network.
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In total approximately 215 women have joined the network.
In 2025, the Women 4 Women mentorship programme was put on hold, and is currently under revision: a new version of the mentoring and solidarity network, taking advantage of other learning component and experiences within ILC (such as the Fellowship programme) and will be launched early 2026.
Women 4 women brochure
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