Women friendly Leeds blog

Vocal Girls is an essential part of the Women Friendly Leeds movement, which was founded through a UN initiative to make Leeds the first Women Friendly City in the UK. As a Hub, we aim to make Leeds a better city for ALL girls and young women to live in by ensuring that they can voice their opinions and influence change through the Women Friendly Leeds campaigns and beyond.

We know that Covid-19 has worsened gender inequalities: this has been evidenced by our findings in the COVID-19 Women’s report. In response to this report, Women Friendly Leeds formed the four-strand “Shining A Light on Women’s Inequalities” campaign. The campaign focuses on addressing inequalities in employability, healthcare and wellbeing and on including the voices of girls and women in decision-making that affects them. Although the COVID-19 Women’s report only represents the views of adult women in Leeds, through discussions with the Vocal Girls and other girls and young women in the city, we are confident that these issues are reflective of their views too.

Women Friendly Leeds have also recently conducted a Safety Survey that gathered the views and experiences of over 1000 women in Leeds, as part of our “Switch on to Women’s Safety” campaign. Whilst the survey has been extremely helpful in understanding the safety needs of many adult women across Leeds, we also want to reach young women and girls in creative and interactive ways to ensure their voices are properly represented on this issue.

Currently, the Vocal Girls meet monthly in-person and weekly on Zoom (soon to be transitioned into fortnightly) to discuss how they will influence these two campaigns. We collectively decided to focus on the healthcare strand of the shining the light campaign and the safety campaign. Some of the ideas of our Vocal Girls hub members include:

  • Facilitating sessions for girls aged 13-18 to share their experiences and knowledge regarding healthcare and safety in Leeds.
  • Connecting with healthcare professionals to understand standard practice for common problems girls and young women may visit the doctor for. This will enable girls and young women to more easily recognise malpractice.
  • Collaborating with different educational settings to ensure girls and young women’s health needs are understood.
  • Creating useful, imaginative resources for professionals and other young women and girls and influencing activities that are already taking place in the city
  • Leading a creative and collaborative response to young women and girls’ safety concerns in the city.

We aim to utilise our profiles on Instagram (@WomenFriendlyLeeds), Twitter (@VocalGirlsWFL) and TikTok (@VocalGirlsWFL) to spread awareness of our work on the campaigns and ensure young women and girls can take control of their health care and safety. To support us, please follow, like, comment and share our content.

Vocal Girls is an open hub, so if you know of, work with or are a girl or young women, aged 13 – 18 and would like to get involved in the campaign please contact Kianna or Martha on [email protected] / [email protected] or 07535629385 / 07546305725.

We understand that attending a monthly or weekly group is not possible for everyone, but we are keen to hear as many voices as possible. Thus, Kianna and Martha are available to run external sessions with groups that are already running too.

Thank you for reading and make sure you look out for our upcoming content!

Best wishes,

The Vocal Girls Team.

 

 

You may also like…

West Yorkshire Police Responses to VAWG Community Questions

West Yorkshire Police Responses to VAWG Community Questions

West Yorkshire Police Respond to VAWG Community QuestionsFollowing on from the Women Friendly Leeds Police Q&A and art exhibition, where we gave Women the platform to speak to power, Detective Superintendent Vanessa Rolfe (WYP) has now responded to the community...

Speak Up! On Women’s Safety

Speak Up! On Women’s Safety

Learn more about our Women’s Safety Q&A with Superintendent Vanessa Rolfe and how we are using art to Speak Up! on safety. See what the West Yorkshire Police are doing to support their new VAWG strategy in Leeds.

Women Friendly Hubs Together Event

Women Friendly Hubs Together Event

On Thursday 28th July Women Friendly Leeds members came together to celebrate our wonderful hubs. At Women Friendly Leeds we have a number of different hubs cater to different women’s issues, such as the culturally diverse women’s hub, the ambassadors and the...

Pride at Leeds

Pride at Leeds

Pride at Leeds Celebrating Our Rights and a Day of Spotting Women Friendly Leeds! This year’s Pride celebration and parade took place on Sunday 7th August for all to attend. Women Friendly Leeds could not attend this year in an official capacity but if you looked...

Book Recommendation – Getaway Girls: 30 Years 30 Stories

Book Recommendation - Getaway Girls: 30 Years 30 Stories For any woman or girl interested in learning more about activism in Leeds through an intersectional lens, look no further than the Getaway Girls library of booklets. Getaway girls, a member of the Women Lives...

WOMEN’S NIGHT SAFE SPACE

WOMEN'S NIGHT SAFE SPACE Women Friendly Leeds is working in partnership with Safer Leeds to create a safe space for women in the centre of Leeds. We will be running a funded pilot to support women who are out at night in Leeds. For the first 3 weekends in March (4th...

Celebrating the End of our Second Year

Celebrating the End of our Second Year

On Monday 18th October, the Women Friendly Leeds team, joined by partners, supporters and guests, came together to celebrate the end of our second year in action. We celebrated the work we have done together through our campaigns and beyond to make Leeds the first...

Leeds Women’s Safety Survey

Leeds Women’s Safety Survey

The Leeds Women’s Safety Survey was carried out in May 2021 and 1,371 women of all ages, and from all parts of the city, took part. The findings provide a powerful insight into their experience of feeling and being safe in the city. They show that despite heightened...

Ambassadors’ Network Meeting 4 Minutes – 2nd September

Ambassadors’ Network Meeting 4 Minutes – 2nd September

Agenda and notes 17:15 – Welcome and Intros. 17:30 – Updates  Shining a Light campaign – updates of the 4 strands of the campaign. Employability – Recruitment toolkit has been devised with input from Mindful Employer and WYCA but we will be looking to do consultation...

August 19, 2021

Emily

Translate »
Skip to content