World YWCA General Secretary's Address
Nairobi, Kenya

By Dr Musimbi Kanyoro

World YWCA President, Monica Zetzsche
Executive Committee members
Member associations
Programme partners and donors
Staff and volunteers
Family and friends
Ladies and gentlemen

I thank God for the opportunity and privilege to be your World General Secretary. My heart is filled with emotions as I look into your faces with knowledge of the reality of the pending changes in our life together. Yes, I am aware that this is the grand finale and I want every minute of the remaining three days to be meaningful for you and for me. I am proud that the Council came back to Africa south of the Sahara after 36 years. I am delighted that many of you participated in Partnership Safaris to other African countries before coming to Nairobi. You have experienced some of our efforts, struggles and challenges. You have put yourselves in our shoes and last night I saw many of you trying on the headscarves as well. It is our wish to make your presence in this Council memorable.

Allow me to invite YWCA staff, and interns who have served with me during my tenure as world General Secretary to join me here on stage. As they come up, I would like to tell you that I trust these women. In my leadership, I consider trust as the highest investment for personnel management. I trust the people that I work with. I trust their ideas, words and actions. I value their commitment and their contributions. I believe in our collective power to lead change. Together we have achieved the quality and quantity of everything that has made the World YWCA what it is today. These women deserve medals of excellence. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking the World staff and interns for their outstanding work and commitment to the YWCA movement.

The YWCA gives space for staff to work in partnership with volunteers to make a difference. Volunteers are a great asset to this movement. They keep the organisation alive, relevant and credible. Volunteer leadership is what gives the YWCA its enduring strength and unique spirit. The World YWCA Executive Committee under the leadership of our President Mónica Zetzsche, have guided us in our work over the quadrennium. Our thanks and appreciations go out to them, along with the many other volunteers who have supported our work at the World Office. Please allow me to also recognise volunteers who support our communication technology and other office related work. I want also to recognise our UN volunteers who give their time to continue our longstanding presence and reputation at the UN. YWCA volunteer teams in Geneva, Nairobi, New York and Paris cover UN activities on our behalf, working in cooperation with other organisations to influence intergovernmental decision making. The importance of the UN connection to our advocacy cannot be overestimated as it offers real opportunities to influence change.

I also want to thank you, our member associations, for giving me the opportunity to lead this incredible movement as your General Secretary. You have placed your trust in me and I have never taken it for granted. Among the highlights this morning will be the results of the four year questionnaire that you all responded so graciously to. I cannot thank you enough. We had a 91% response from member associations and the results have helped us to formulate the strategic framework for the next four years. Your input has determined the common programmes and actions that we will do together in the movement. This four year audit of our movement is one of our best tools for internal organisational accountability.

Another highlight of the 2007 World YWCA Council is the partnership with the Kenya YWCA. It is a great responsibility to host a World Council, and Kenya YWCA will be remembered for hosting not one but two Councils, the Extraordinary and the ordinary World Council 2007. Congratulations to the YWCA of Kenya for joining the hall of fame of courageous YWCAs that have hosted World Councils.

The 2007 Nairobi twin Councils are also African Councils. As a person who has travelled extensively and lived in different parts of the world, I always come back to Africa to replenish my faith and hope. This is the continent where people do so much with so little and where the Council theme, “Changing Lives, Changing Communities” finds its most important meaning. I thank you for coming to Nairobi in great numbers. I thank our partners for turning out in numbers that we have never seen before in our 152 year history. The International Women’s Summit (IWS) has proved that we are a powerful organisation. We have the power to change, the power to act and the power to transform lives and our communities, and this is what I would like to talk to you about.

Building Upon the Movement’s Story

In this final speech as your World YWCA General Secretary I want to share with you my story of ten years of service to the YWCA movement. In this way, I hope to pass on my experience to you as the custodians of this movement. Stories play a key role in movements because they teach and preserve traditions and practices, policies and values. They enable us to talk about successes and failures. They are important ways of preserving and remembering the past while also opening doors to the future. Our story in the YWCA movement is a story of women who have dared to live out their visions. This story spans one and a half centuries of change that has affected every aspect of women’s private and public lives. This story is what keeps us alive. Other leaders before me have created chapters in this rich history, and I would like to build upon and continue the YWCA story by passing on to you what I have learnt in the YWCA movement over this past decade.

I prefer to call the YWCA a movement rather than an organization. Movements have their distinguishing features. One of the beauties of a movement is the commitment to substance over bureaucracy. Superficial and trivial activities always give way to a serious concern for content and substance, priorities and discipline. A movement is a civil place, where people respect each other and work for the common good. For me, the YWCA has been such a place. I have worked in confidence with all of you, from staff to Executive Committee to members, friends and partners. I have stretched you and you have stretched me and today we have all grown much bigger and much wiser than we were in 1997, when Anita Andersson offered me a letter of appointment and the world began to refer to me as the first woman from a so called developing nation to head this mammoth movement. The emphasis was on being the first and not so much in what I was bringing to the table.

When I first came to the post, I found a movement that had an admirable history of success and great names of past leaders. But the movement was in need of new risks in order to implement change that would be in line with a new millennium. Overtime the movement had become so good at what it did that it didn’t see the value in working with others. I felt that the movement had a great love for the past and a massive fear for new things and new people, and especially those who had not been associated with the YWCA.

The four year audit of 1999 told us that we were not known and in fact we were mostly confused with YMCA. It has been my goal since arriving to break this isolation and to improve our ways of working collaboratively and also make our brand as YWCA be known for what we do. Movements define themselves by their focal issues rather than bureaucratic boundaries. What we do is what will define us, not the name or logo or even the money we have. Working collaboratively with others makes us stronger and it enables us to be good stewards of resources and knowledge. I believe the just concluded IWS bears witness to support this statement.

Over the past decade, the World YWCA has built strong working partnerships at the international level. We have collaborated with the World Alliance of YMCAs for our Joint Week of Prayer and for peace and justice in the Middle East. The YWCAs and YMCAs share significant history and that should not be denied or changed. Today we also have joint associations which have membership in the World YWCA and the World Alliance of YMCAs. This makes a good working relationship an asset. During my tenure I have deliberately and consciously related to my counterpart General Secretary of the World Alliance of YMCAs. We have shared ideas; visited each other, enabled our presidents and staff to meet. We have also facilitated high level participation at each others major events including Councils. I am happy to leave behind a legacy of respect and cordial collaboration between World YWCA and the World Alliance of YMCAs.

During my tenure the World YWCA has also developed youth policies in partnership with other international youth organizations and combined resources to reduce HIV prevalence among young people in Africa. We have developed closer working relationship with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, the World Organization of the Scout Movement, the International Youth Foundation, the International Award, the Intentional Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent. These seven youth organizations have focused the youth work on HIV and AIDS in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The World YWCA has also established strong relationships with the International Community of Women Living with HIV AIDS and numerous others networks. We have signed a new partnership agreement with UNICEF to guide future work on children and particularly the girl child, and we have forged strong partnership with UNFPA on young women’s reproductive health and rights. We continue to work with UNIFEM and other women’s agencies. Seventy-seven of our partners offered workshops at the International Women’s Summit, which is clearly a sign that we have successfully broken the isolation.

The four-year report also indicates that over 90% of YWCAs collaborate with other NGOs and a majority of associations (82%) work with other women’s organisations. Partnership with ecumenical agencies also continues to be strong at the global level and in some regions; 67% of member associations work with faith based organisations. We have learnt a great deal from this effort to form strategic alliances.

Alliances are for sharing resources, knowledge and strengths. Collaboration can spread expertise, networks and reputation from one group to another. When we work separately we are more vulnerable to being pitted against each other. When we work together there is greater potential to make an impact. However, partnerships take time and resources. They can eat up some of the best time of our staff and leadership. So it is important to focus on building strategic partnerships with clearly defined goals and benefits. As we create partnerships to strengthen the effectiveness of our work, we must be clear about why we choose certain partners and what we aim to achieve by working with them. It is my hope that we will continue to build upon the partnerships created during the Summit by strengthening connections at national, regional and global level, particularly with positive women’s groups.

We have also achieved a milestone in reclaiming our space in the ecumenical movement. After the Second World War, men and women from YWCAs, YMCAs and the World Student Christian Federation formed the World Council of Churches in order to respond to the needs of rebuilding communities. It was the women of the World YWCA who initiated the women’s sub unit of the WCC. However, over time our links with the ecumenical movement had weakened and become lukewarm. Shortly after I began my tenure, I initiated the reinstatement of the World YWCA as an international ecumenical partner at the World Council of Churches and this was ratified during the WCC Harare Assembly in 1998. Today we work in close partnership with the WCC and other ecumenical bodies. The Rev. Pirjo Liisa Penttinen, General Secretary of the YWCA of Finland has been our eye and ear holding us to accountability to the Ecumenical movement.

I strongly believe that the YWCA should sustain a place at the table in the Christian ecumenical movement. This is about being faithful to our history and the aspirations of a majority of our member associations. In this age of religious fundamentalism, we need to hear more voices of people of faith who dare resist fundamentalism. YWCAs can show the world that people of different faiths can work together and achieve good results. We have experience in managing diversity and that is why the YWCA story of working across boarders must be told clearly and loudly. When the YWCA denies faith, we abandon many women for whom faith is their rock and hope. We betray the sacrifice of theologians, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and others who are struggling for women’s liberation by seeking change in religious structures, traditions and texts. The YWCA would be stronger working hand in hand with women theologians and other liberation theologians because their purpose, like ours is to seek justice for all people.

The other part of this picture is that many of us in this room and in the YWCA are sustained by faith. Here in Kenya and indeed in all of Africa, it is faith that gives us hope to celebrate life amidst forces of death. It is my honest wish that the YWCA would remain faithful to its Christian foundation. I believe the Christian foundation is what makes this movement open and inclusive and also ready to provide services to women and their communities. I believe that to be Christian is to be hospitable, always refraining from making judgment that excludes people.

Power to Change

In 1999 the World YWCA Council in Cairo brought together the World YWCA’s 84 affiliated associations with the theme, “Power to Change”. Under the Presidency of Anita Andersson, we dared to take a step of faith and adopted a strategic framework for the World YWCA movement. We embraced a common vision, mission and values and included the element of accountability in the Constitution. We also committed to launch a global campaign to expand resources and opportunities for the leadership development of women and girls.

The YWCA Global Campaign, Power to Change, as it came to be known, has been a wonderful opportunity for the movement to build common stewardship and to establish a permanent fund that will secure our leadership programmes with women and girls into the future. As you know, raising this money has meant a great deal to me and it is one of the legacies I am proud to leave behind. This fund has been about securing our future. It has been about making sure that women and girls everywhere will always have the chance to develop leadership through this great movement. This afternoon we will launch the Fund and begin working towards our goal of building the leadership of women and girls for change.

The campaign has shown us that we have enormous capacity within our movement to mobilise around common priorities, particularly when supported by training and resources. We must continue to mobilise this collective power in the future, not just for fundraising but in our advocacy on global priorities.

Leading Change: The Power to Act

In 2003 at my second Council, the World YWCA membership increased to 100 affiliated associations. The Brisbane Council met under the theme “Leading Change: The Power to Act” and adopted Standards of Good Management and Accountability for self-assessment by member associations, which were developed under the leadership of Jane Lee Wolfe as World YWCA President. I have been so proud to learn through the four year report that these standards are being brought to life by many associations at the national and local levels.

If I were to name one parting legacy I wish to leave for the World YWCA, it would be this issue of “accountability, accountability, accountability”. Our legitimacy as a movement that strives for justice is derived from the quality of our work and the recognition and support we receive from various stakeholders – donors, partners, members, participants, governments and the wider public. Modelling good governance is essential if we are to succeed and maintain our legitimacy. Our first accountability must always be to the people whose issues we are taking on board. If it is violence against women, they are the women who suffer violence; if it is about HIV and AIDS, our stakeholders are women affected by the pandemic.

Monitoring and evaluation need to become elements of our future work together if we are to operate with integrity and accountability. We need to explore systems that enable us to support each other to reach these standards and to be mutually accountable. Methods such as peer review could enable us to share responsibility and resources across the movement. It may be uncomfortable to open ourselves to review but it is the only way forward if we are serious about safeguarding the reputation that the YWCA has built over the past 152 years.

Changing Lives, Changing Communities

Now here in Nairobi at my third World Council, we are gathering under the theme, “Changing Lives, Changing Communities”, we have grown to 107 affiliated associations and 18 developing groups all working under a common vision, mission and values. The new element is that there are many developing YWCA groups in French speaking African countries. This mushrooming of francophone YWCAs must be credited to Helene Yinda, Programme Director for Africa and the Middle East.

The four year report tells us that 80% of member associations have considered the World YWCA vision, mission and values in their strategic plans, and have embraced a purpose consistent with that of the World YWCA. President Monica Zetzsche will go in the history record as having facilitated the most extensive overhaul of the World YWCA Constitution. Last week we together voted in the revised Constitution and it has become now our tool for common understanding of the World YWCA movement. There is a great future ahead if all member associations rally behind this Constitution and make it a model for national and local associations. The revised Constitution has brought our 152 year old movement into the 21st century with unity and clarity of purpose. I am proud to have been part of this great achievement and indeed it is a good time to move on after such a milestone of positive change in the movement.

However, we need to go into the future with caution and foresight. Movements can deteriorate into mere organizations when rules and bureaucracies dominate decision making. We can become so bent on matters of compliance to our revised Constitution and Standards of Good Management that we think our success just depends on compliance alone. Sooner or later we could apply disciplinary action and disaffiliate member associations that do not fit the uniformity that these rules require. This could completely change the nature of the YWCA as a movement. My plea to you is that rather than choosing the comfort of rigidity, dare to manage the ambiguity and the diversity that is inherent to the YWCA as a movement. My time as General Secretary has taught me that this can be done while at the same time protecting our credibility. The power of a movement lies in its ability to remain in solidarity with others, especially those who are struggling for survival. Accompaniment is an important part of the nature of movements.

Let me illustrate.

In the YWCA, women are at the centre of our common purpose and identity as YWCAs and it is women who have sustained this movement since its inception. It is women who have interpreted issues of the time in their communities and shaped the YWCA’s diverse responses and solutions. But today it is no longer the case that all member associations embrace this identity. During these 10 years in the leadership I have come to value honest dialogue wit member associations over difficult issues.

For example, since the Brisbane Council, the World YWCA staff in Geneva and I have had many conversations with the YWCA of the USA during their Change Initiative, and particularly as they have considered changes to their bye laws. The YWCA of the USA demonstrated sensitivity to the concerns of the World YWCA but their own circumstances led to their revised bye laws introducing a gender neutrality clause. The YWCA of the USA remains women led at the national level while now allowing in special instances women and men as members at the local community level.

In another context, the joint YMCA-YWCAs in the Scandinavian countries have voiced concerns about the requirement of the revised Constitution for compulsory use of the YWCA acronym. Since their founding in the 19th century, they have been using well established acronyms in their languages. Increasingly they have found using two acronyms long. In some of the joint associations in the Nordic and Baltic countries you can already find some local associations and leaders dropping the use of YWCA and retaining only YMCA. I beg you to continue using both names.

A new Board must give priority to developing principles of compliance and non compliance, which will be used alongside the revised Constitution but this World Council as the highest decision making body must provide guidance and guidelines through recommendations for the World YWCA leadership on how to manage and negotiate the autonomy of member associations. It is very important to be clear about what things should not be compromised in the name of autonomy of national associations. Anticipating and conversing with member associations now is better than waiting until decisions have been made.

Grand Finale

We have just finished the International Women’s Summit on Women’s Leadership on HIV and AIDS. Focusing on HIV and AIDS during my term of office has demonstrated that change is possible and impact is more obvious when collective power is focused and strategic. It has also enabled us to create closer working relationships with other women’s movements, faith based groups, UN agencies, governments, businesses, foundations, NGOs and in particular, positive women’s networks.

There is much we can do to mobilize collective actions that change lives and communities. We must mobilize women’s leadership. We must share knowledge and resources to empower women. We must stand in solidarity with women in every situation, not just our members. Our quest for human dignity must extend to all women. At the World Council 2003, we claimed space in our movement for indigenous women, and this time around, we have been claiming space for HIV positive women. Can we not work equally hard to make our YWCAs safe spaces for all women without exception and without judgment? Can our voice for women extend to countries where women’s human rights are threatened even if we do not have a YWCA membership? Until all and every woman is safe and free, treated justly and with dignity, none of us is truly free. Our search for liberation of women must be about all women not just some.

We must become more politically involved because the policies we wish to see supporting our advocacy work are made on political decision-making tables. I see so many YWCAs empowering women economically, but failing to challenge the systemic policies that continue to keep massive numbers of people underprivileged and in poverty. As we advocate on behalf of women and girls, we must work in coalitions with other women and organizations with a similar vision. We must also find opportunities to learn from each other in this movement and grow solidarity. This is a special focus of the new strategic framework: the World YWCA should not only seek to mobilize women’s leadership around key priorities but also facilitate exchanges among member associations that enrich skills and knowledge. The African Partnership Safari is one example of how we have tried to benefit from our presence in Africa to ensure delegates leave with a stronger knowledge of issues in the region and an increased commitment to be part of collective actions for change.

Future Visions for the Movement’s Leadership

Many people have asked me why I have chosen to leave the World YWCA. I truly want to thank all of you around the world who have written to me since learning of my planned departure. I have appreciated your words of affirmation and kindness in letters, cards, emails, phone calls and in person. The Gala celebration of Saturday night was the climax and I felt truly honored. My whole family thanks you for the great spectacle that you put up for me. I truly know that you in the YWCA movement love me as much as I love you and our movement. And I want to use this opportunity to explain my decision to leave. I love this movement sufficiently not to hold onto it or to feel I own it. I respect that it existed before me and will go on after me. Each of us has inherited this movement from the many extraordinary leaders before us, and in turn we must know when to pass it on to other custodians.

Leadership is about knowing when to stay and when to let go. Often times, transitions between leaders are difficult and can be detrimental where there is absence of succession planning and transition management. Throughout my term, I have seen exemplary YWCAs drop their standards as long-serving leaders retire or refuse to let go. The YWCA becomes such a part of our lives that we fear that it won’t survive without us, and maybe that we won’t survive without it. We fear that new people or younger people will ruin our visions and we even refuse to imagine a different body in our seat, our office space and we make the YWCA synonymous with us.

I decided to leave before I start believing that I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The Executive Committee under the leadership of the President offered me a continuation but I declined on principle. I am leaving because I know that the movement is healthy in every way.

The risks we have taken during my term of office have yielded positive results – we are now more focused and strategic; we are better known and better resourced; we have solid partnerships that enable us to reach even greater numbers of women and girls; and we have tools for accountability. However, if we are to succeed in the future, it will be because we have applied the knowledge gathered over the past 152 years and confronted our fear of change. We must continue to take risks and think out of the box and venture into newness.

I am leaving because I had promised myself on principle that 10 years was enough for me to add a chapter to the story of the World YWCA. Knowing in advance and informing my President and the Executive Committee meant that I could support them to implement a good succession plan and to put in place tools for transition management. This will ensure that the future of this movement will be in good hands.

I hope that you can take my decision as a positive act of transformational leadership. I urge Boards and staff of all YWCAs to consider succession planning as an area where the YWCA movement can do some improvement. This movement is much bigger than all of us and we can trust that it will continue long after we are gone. Good succession planning will enable us to get the right people with the right skills to continue to build upon the YWCA story, but we need to plan the succession of staff and Boards. To serve on Governance Boards or to be a staff manager, both require competence. Movements are generally participatory, but they succeed when they link participation and representation with competence. We are going to be electing the World Board. Monica and I will both bow out on the 11 of July. In our search to elect leadership that represents diversities of generations, regions and cultures, let us also look strongly for competence. When I think of competence, I mean technical competence as well as competence in relationship building. Poor relationship skills sabotage even the most competent person. Success in our jobs requires people with the skills to do the tasks before them and to respect and include others even those whose voices are faint.

Leadership of a movement also requires a high sense of creativity. It is the process of discovery through imagination and boldness that helps leaders of movements to bring about the necessary changes. Sometimes members may not be prepared for some of the paths that leaders wish to take. With creativity a leader can build support to embrace change in times when fear blocks us from traveling along a new and different path.

Our leadership in this movement must also be about justice. I have said it before and I will say it again, that we must find ways to improve working conditions for our staff in this movement. Unless we can pay sufficient remuneration for our staff, we will become trapped into employing people who are affordable rather than suitable. This is an issue of justice. Movements are never casual on issues of justice. The proposed strategic framework 2008 – 2011 includes a continued focus on expanding the movement’s human and financial resources because it is the only way we will be able to address this problem.

The final point I wish to make about leadership is that movements suffer when leaders are unable or unwilling to hold the group accountable. I have seen our Boards at local, national and world level often shy away from taking appropriate decisions in a timely manner and this has many negative effects on the wellbeing of the movement. As a movement that has built its reputation on developing the leadership of women and girls, we must ensure the leadership we provide is effective and decisive, and we must hold each other accountable to this.

Managing Change in the Movement

Appointed in 1997 and departing in 2007, after three Councils we have together made a great journey. On the way, we achieved 50% young women on the World Board, we hired a completely young staff in Geneva, we increased our financial resources, and we are a respected women’s movement that is invited to the table that matters. We have regained our place in the women’s movement and in faith based circles. We have made young women’s meetings at World Council more significant and we have brought back the Council to Africa. The list can go on, but one final word. I have been faithful and honored your trust. I gave of my time, skills and resources without withholding. I have been true to my call for accountability and faithfulness and I take with me these very values to my next job.

I look forward to a new chapter in my life. I have been an activist for women’s rights for over 20 years and now I will move into a position at the Packard Foundation to help manage grant making in the Population Programme. I will miss the excitement and stimulation that are the rewards of leading this incredible organisation. I am extremely indebted to the movement for giving me the opportunity to lead. Handing over this leadership to my successor will give me joy and satisfaction because I know that this is the right time to do so. I look forward to that time with expectation as I hope you too do. I have been faithful to the trust you have placed in me by ensuring that everything we do is in accordance with World YWCA vision, mission, values and strategic framework. I am delighted to be concluding my leadership in my home country and continent accompanied by the Kenya YWCA and African YWCAs. I urge you to use the lenses of hope that we African people use as we move on happily in our world of material poverty. Let us teach you how to value hope and embrace faith. Thank you so much for the privilege of serving you. Thank you and thank you again and again.

Musimbi Kanyoro