Padare Competitors

UN Women is the United Nations agency for women's rights, gender equality and women's empowerment. A global champion ForAllWomenAndGirls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. UN Women supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality, and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to implement these standards. It stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on five priority areas: increasing women’s leadership and participation; ending violence against women; engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting. UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing gender equality.

UCT is one of the leading higher education institutions on the African continent and has a tradition of academic excellence that is respected worldwide. Situated on spectacular Devil’s Peak, it is Africa’s oldest and foremost university. Three worldwide rankings have placed UCT among the world’s top 200 institutions, the only African university to have achieved this distinction. UCT is research-led; the premier academic meeting point between South Africa, the continent and the world, and committed to addressing the key issues of our natural world. Taking advantage of expanding global networks and UCT’s distinct vantage point in Africa, the university is committed, through innovative research and scholarship, to grapple with the key issues of our natural and social worlds. UCT aims to produce graduates whose qualifications are internationally recognised and locally applicable, underpinned by values of engaged citizenship and social justice. UCT will promote diversity and transformation within our institution and beyond, including growing the next generation of academics. Follow us on Twitter (@UCT_news) and Facebook (University of Cape Town).

Sonke Gender Justice is a women’s rights organisation committed to feminist principles using rights-based and gender-transformative approaches to achieve human rights and gender justice. Founded in 2006, Sonke centres on a shared understanding that violence against women and girls constitutes one of the gravest and most pervasive human rights violations that undermines our democracies in far-reaching ways. Our driving motivation remains that the gender inequalities, harmful norms, and power relations underpinning domestic and sexual violence are bad for both women and men, and that men and boys have critical roles in ending violence, transforming gender roles, and ultimately being part of solutions to achieve gender justice. Sonke works with community-based organisations, faith-based organisations, United Nations agencies, media, academic institutions, government, international NGOs, private sector, multilateral agencies, international human rights bodies, development partners, and intergovernmental agencies. In South Africa, Sonke is a registered NGO with offices in the Western Cape Province (Cape Town and a Wellness Centre in Gugulethu), Gauteng Province (Johannesburg and Diepsloot), Mpumalanga Province (Bushbuckridge), and Eastern Cape Province (Butterworth and East London). Through our partnerships, including as the MenEngage Africa (MEA) Alliance secretariat, we work in 24 countries across Africa with offices in Kampala (Uganda), Buea (Cameroon), and Maseru (Lesotho).