We are very happy and excited to see all of you again at this 3rd regional meeting of the Young Women’s Network of South Caucasus. For those who will join our group for the first time, we will take this opportunity to tell you a little about how it all started.

In the spring of 2007, the first regional meeting of YWNSC took place in Istanbul where more than 25 young womenfrom different NGOs working in the field of women’s rights in our region (Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia andSouth Ossetia) actively participated to put the basis of this very important network. During this first meeting, the network took the decision to conduct a regional survey to assess the needs of young women in our region.

During the next regional meeting in 2008, in Odessa, the draft results and analysis were presented to the network and important decisions were taken after several discussions and brainstorming sessions, and the two important decisions were as following:

- The joint publication of all the surveys combined together and the launching of the report in our respective regions.

- The launch of the official website of the YWNSC

After a long recess, we are back and actively ready to continue the work we started all together and make young women’s voices heard in South Caucasus. In June 22-23, the preparatory group consisting of representatives of all the regions had a meeting at the kvinna till kvinna office in Tblisi to discuss all the planning details for the next meeting in September 2009, which will take place in Stockholm. Some of you joined us on skype from Armenia and Abkhazia to give your inputs for the final program.
The topic for our next meeting will be: “Activism and the Network”

We will have international guests to exchange on different experiences and share our own. Some parts of the program are open to be moderated by the participants if there is interest among you, some of you already made suggestions. For those of you who are interested to present a workshop of 1.5-2 hours on this topic or related to our topic and that could benefit others please send your suggestions until the 25th of July, 2009.

You got a letter also from Tako to provide some information for our website, please reply back as soon as possible to have everything ready for the meeting.

Hope to see you all very soon and share together a week of action, empowerment and fun!

With peace and sisterhood,

The YWN preparatory committee