The Prestigious Sister-To-Sister Young Feminist Leadership Program
PHOTO: (L-R) Ms. Richelle M. Allison with Liberia’s Nobel Laureate, Madam Leymah Gbowee
The Executive Director of Young Women’s Actions for Rights, Peace and Development (YWARPD), Ms. Richelle M. Allison has been selected alongside 24 other young, feminist peace and environmental activists from across the world to participate in the prestigious Sister-to-Sister Young Feminist Leadership Program.
A YWARPD press release issued over the weekend said the Sister-to-Sister program brings together young feminist leaders – sisters – in an intensive program which fosters crucial solidarity, support, sisterhood, and skills-building to better equip activists for the challenges ahead.
The six-week learning program is designed to:
- Broaden understanding of feminist leadership and resilience in the face of new global realities and emerging threats, with a focus on peace, justice, and gender equality.
- Strengthen tools and strategies for navigating uncertainty, including digital safety and adaptive leadership rooted in feminist values.
- Enhance collective learning and peer exchange by deepening mutual trust, sisterhood, and solidarity among young women activists confronting intersecting challenges.
- Support community-centered and creative action, encouraging participants to develop and apply innovative, feminist approaches to social and environmental transformation.
- Deepen feminist networks for support and collective action, and through this network build resilience.
The 2025 Sister-to-Sister program, rooted in the powerful legacy of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, affirms a foundational feminist truth: the climate crisis is not gender-neutral, environmental justice and gender equality are inextricably linked. The theme for this year program is “Rooted and Rising”
For more than a decade, the Sister-to-Sister Young Feminist Leadership Program has been a cornerstone of Nobel Women’s Initiative (NWI) strategy to foster a world where feminist peace and security prevail. The Nobel Women’s Initiative is an international advocacy organisation based in Ottawa, Canada. It was created in 2006 by female winners of the Nobel Peace Prize to support women’s groups around the world in campaigning for justice, peace and equality. Members include former Nobel laureates Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Jody Williams. Shirin Ebadi. Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman. Maria Ressa, Narges Mohammadi and Oleksandra Matviichuk.
In 2022, Ms. Allison founded YWARPD to serve as a platform to promote the participation of young women in issues affecting their survival, development and growth. She is presently a senior student at the AME University in Liberia, majoring in Mass Communication. She is also a graduate of the Young Political Leadership School Africa. In 2024, she represented her organization at the annual leadership conference organized by PeaceJam Ghana and met with Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee. Ms. Allison is also the Chartered President of the Rotaract eClub of Social Innovators