Gender Links (GL) is a Southern African NGO founded in 2001 that is committed to a region in which women and men are able to participate equally in all aspects of public and private life in accordance with the provisions of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development. With its headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, and satellite offices in Mauritius and Botswana, and project sites in Lesotho, Madagascar, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe GL locates its mission within the broader framework of strengthening democracy in the region through ensuring the equal and effective participation of all citizens, especially women whose views and voices have been systematically marginalised.

From 2005 to 2008, GL worked with civil society partners in the campaign to elevate the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Declaration on Gender and Development into a Protocol with 28 targets to be achieved by 2015. GL coordinates the Southern African Gender Protocol Alliance that brings together over 40 NGOs at national and regional level in six thematic clusters for advancing gender equality in the region. In the coming year a seventh cluster on women and peace building will be formed.

A key GL area of focus is the transformation of gender relations is in and through the media. This is achieved by conducting research; training; creating and sharing content that demonstrates how gender can be integrated into media outputs; taking advantage of the opportunities presented by information technology and strengthening the communication skills of gender activists as well as women in decision-making. GL has pioneered gender and media literacy courses that aim to "watch the watchdogs"

GL is a founding member of, and hosts the secretariat of the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) network. Together with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) the partners mount a Gender and Media (GEM) Summit every two years to show case what is working.

Through its gender justice programme, GL links activists and the media in campaigns to end gender violence. Together with government partners, the thrust now is to progress from campaigns to action plans with concrete targets, time frames and indicators for achieving the SADC target of reducing gender violence by half by 2015. GL is co-ordinating a cutting edge pilot project to develop indicators for measuring gender violence to enhance these efforts.

In 2003, GL embarked on a gender and governance programme that combines research and advocacy on women in decision-making with media training. Local government has emerged as a specific area of focus. The governance and justice programme come together in a unique initiative to localise national action plans to end gender violence with best practices shared annually. GL is currently involved in a cutting edge research project to develop indicators for measuring gender violence.

GL's "Write about rights" programme provides the glue to its different programme areas through its flagship Opinion and Commentary Service that links activists and decision-makers with the mainstream media. The "I" stories or first hand accounts provide an avenue for voices seldom heard in the media, such as those caring for People with HIV; survivors of gender violence and women councilors to speak out. The Gender and Media Diversity Centre (GMDC), launched in 2008, brings together media development NGOs and training institutions in a bid to "collect and connect" knowledge as well as "collaborate" in advancing gender equality and diversity.

All programmes are organised around the Gender and Media E Community which includes GL's list serve, website, data base of close to 5000 contacts and the cyber dialogue facility that enables GL to hold online discussions with participants in the region and across the globe. Click here to download the Gender Links institutional pamphlet.

Click here to view a photo gallery of Gender Links' activities. View the institutional video and download the GL institutional pamphlet.

FACT FILE !n 2009/2010: GL had a Board of nine members from six countries, chaired by Dr Muna Ndulo of Cornell University. GL's newest Board Member is Eduardo Namburete from Mozambique. Staff increased by 53% from 26 to 40. They come from 13 countries; 8 SADC countries; one East African (Uganda); one Latin American (Chile); one Canadian; one from Europe (Netherlands); and one from the USA. With the increase in staff and departure of one male member of staff the proportion of men has unfortunately declined from 20% to 15 %. At the time of publication however GL had recruited two more male staff, bringing the proportion back up. GL now has a presence in 8 SADC countries. The head office remains in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mauritius and Botswana with five staff have satellite offices. There are project sites in Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The number of active partners increased from 69 to 77. The number of workshops and events declined slightly from 196 to 193. These took place in 15 countries. The number of participants increased by 43% from 8095 to 11608, a 43% increase. Of these 2276 received training; 2023 in the governance programme. The largest number of participants (over 4000) was in the Sixteen Days cyber dialogues, accounting for the justice programme having the highest proportion of participants (60%). Website hits more than doubled from 5 million to 11 million; an average of about 1 million hits per month. The contacts data base has over 5000 names. Following Beijing Plus 15 these are global in nature, including the offices of the World Bank around the world. GL received 385 media queries (an average of 6.5 per week, up from 3.5 per week in the previous period) and made 55 TV appearances. GL distributed 116 articles through its Opinion and Commentary Service; each used an average of at least three times. GL helped media partners to produced 148 gender aware HIV and AIDS policies and eight gender policies. The governance unit helped develop three more national strategies for gender and local government; 59 GBV and 21 gender and GBV action plans at the local level. The justice department undertook a stock taking exercise of National Action Plans to end Gender Violence in three SADC countries. GL won the Woman of the Year Award in the NGO/parastatal category and the chair received recognition at Cornell University for his contribution to gender justice on International Women's Day 2010.