Join our Young Women’s Advisory Board 2025!
Would you like to unlock your full potential to champion and lead action to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG)?
At LAWRS, we are looking for 10 enthusiastic Latin American Young Women aged 18 to 24, based in London, to join our Young Women’s Advisory Board for one year 🥳
What’s it about? 🤔
The Young Women’s Advisory Board is an initiative by the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) and its project for girls and young women: Sin Fronteras. The programme seeks to train Latin American Young Women for collective action at the intersection of migration, age, gender, amongst other issues.
This programme provides you with theoretical and practical skills in feminist leadership and advocacy that you will be able to apply in your life, your career, and with your community.
The program will be held in English and Spanish and meetings will be in-person in London.
Policy, sorority and leadership!
Who’s it for? 🤷🏽♀️
Latin American Young Women aged 18 to 24*, based in London, are invited to participate in the Young Women’s Advisory Board and will receive a stipend to support their engagement in the programme (at London Living Wage levels).
* This also includes first and second generation young women with Latin American ethnicity and European/UK nationality.
* You must be at most 24 years old by the time of submitting the application form.
How? 👩🏽💻
The one year programme (May 2025 - March 2026) consists of 12 Leadership and Advocacy training sessions and group meetings about tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) as Latin American young migrant women advocates, and 3 organisational planned activities (LAWRS’ Annual General Meeting (AGM), LAWRS’ International Women’s Day event (IWD), and the International Women’s Day Million Women Rise March).
Programme Timeline 🗓️
Programme Starts: Saturday 10th May 2025!
Leadership and Advocacy training sessions and group meetings:
All of these will take place on Saturdays from 11am - 3 pm, in-person in London.
- 10th of May 2025
- 24th of May 2025
- 7th of June 2025
- 21st of June 2025
- 5th of July 2025
- 19th of July 2025
- 2nd of August 2025
- 13th of September 2025
- 27th of September 2025
- 25th of October 2025
- 22nd of November 2025
- 6th of December 2025
Organisational planned activities:
- 8th of November 2025: LAWRS's Annual General Meeting (AGM).
- 28th of February 2026: LAWRS's International Women's Day Event (IWD).
- 7th of March 2026: International Women's Day: Million Women Rise March
Program Ends: Saturday 7th March 2026.
* Throughout the year we expect to have participative activities where the YWAB can amplify their network and uptake action. These are highly recommended activities, however they are not compulsory and will not be financially compensated.
Benefits 🤩
With the Young Women’s Advisory Board you can: gain skills, meet new people, and influence LAWRS’ policy work bringing young migrant women’s voices to the centre of the organisation and the public debate.
Get involved in the work that we do, get paid for your time, gain valuable experience to include in your CV, get trained in leadership and activism, and be invited to LAWRS events and beyond!
This is your chance to create a more equal world for girls and young women, participate in a collective social change actions programme to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), and shape LAWRS’ policy work.
Apply Now! 🙋🏽♀️
Apply online using our Application Form: ➡️ ➡️ https://forms.gle/PXK37PotgJyS1sr29 ⬅️ ⬅️
Applications open until Friday 25th April 2025.
Please note that completion of the application form does not guarantee a place in the programme.
If your application is accepted, you will be invited to an interview. The interviews (30 minutes approximately) are going to be conducted online, on the 28th April and 1st May at some point between 10am and 4pm.
If selected, you are expected to attend the opening session on Saturday 10th May 2025.
Contact 🤳🏼
Melissa, the project coordinator, would be happy to talk to you if you have any questions or need support with your application. You can contact her at: sinfronteras@lawrs.org.uk / 07802 645001.
We would be grateful if you could also share this information with your network as we want to ensure many young women know about this opportunity, especially those with a passion to make a difference in the lives of women and girls.
Thank you for taking an interest, we can’t wait to hear from you! 🥰
Voices of Young Latinas: Peer Research into Sexual Harassment at London Universities
The Young Women’s Advisory Board (YWAB) at LAWRS is launching its latest work: ‘Voices of Young Latinas: Peer Research into Sexual Harassment at London Universities.’
Who We Are
The YWAB is a group of young Latin American women aged 18-25 dedicated to addressing all forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG). We approach this work from our unique lived experiences and intersecting identities as migrants, Latin Americans, and young women. By gathering in a safe, collaborative space, we focus on building leadership and advocacy skills, engaging in policy discussions, and increasing our abilities to influence decision-making spaces to benefit young women in our community.
Our Programme and the design of a Peer Research Report
Our YWAB programme ran from April 2024 to March 2025, with training sessions focusing on peer research, leadership and advocacy, VAWG, sexual harassment, and artivism. These sessions have been guided by LAWRS, Partnership for Young London, and the artist Ximena Ruiz del Río.
Through discussing shared experiences, we discovered a gap in research concerning how Latin American women’s intersecting identities affect their experiences with sexual harassment in higher education. The impact of this harassment deeply affects us as we navigate university spaces. To amplify our advocacy efforts, we decided to create a peer research report that gives voice to these experiences.
We held a focus group to design our research question. All of the participants within our group were either starting, in the process of, or had finished their university degree. We discovered that most of us had faced some form of sexual harassment tied to our identities as Latin American women. These abuses were often unseen, overlooked,or normalised yet they had a profound personal impact in our lives. Our research explored how stereotypes, accents, migration, racism, xenophobia, and sexism intersect and shape these experiences.
We carried out 13 semi-structured interviews and designed and distributed a questionnaire, receiving 32 survey responses. Using thematic analysis, we collaboratively wrote this peer research report, which includes key findings and policy recommendations.
Key Findings
Our research revealed five key findings:
- Sexual harassment has a significant negative impact on Latin American women across multiple areas of life.
- University procedures for reporting sexual harassment are broken, making them an inaccessible and time-consuming process which deters reporting.
- Multiple stigmatisation of being a migrant, Latin American, and a woman dissuades women from reporting as it positions them as more vulnerable.
- Stereotypes surrounding Latin American women make them more vulnerable to sexual harassment as they’re perceived as more ‘sexually available’.
- The frequency of sexual harassment paired with the stereotyping of Latin Americans in the U.K. results in these behaviours and acts being perceived as the ‘norm’.
These findings provide valuable insights into the realities faced by young Latin American women and shed light on the critical issues affecting their lives.
For a more detailed understanding of our research, including a full description of the key findings and policy recommendations, please read our full report here.
Thank you for supporting the voices of young Latinas.
Our Artivism: A Creative Response to Tackle VAWG
As part of our peer research process, we also created a social media campaign to raise awareness of sexual harassment and advocate for young migrant women's rights. Our campaign reflects our commitment to tackling all forms of VAWG in British society.
Check out the entire campaign, images, and messages on our Instagram page: Sin Fronteras - LAWRS Instagram.
Get Involved
If you have any questions or want to participate in our free activities for young Latin American women, we would love to hear from you! Sign up through our Google form, or contact us via WhatsApp at 07802 645001 or by email at sinfronteras@lawrs.org.uk.
Our activities are open to Latin American girls and young women between 14 and 25 years old living in the UK, including first and second-generation women with Latin American ethnicity and European/UK nationality.