The latest WOSSO Advocacy and Networking Town Hall, held on 23 September 2025, brought together Fellows and partners from across the Global South for a vibrant exchange on advocacy, innovation, and grassroots leadership. The session featured three powerful speakers who shared their journeys in sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), agriculture and food security, and sex workers’ rights. Together, their stories underscored the importance of cross regional solidarity and inclusive advocacy strategies ahead of major global policy moments like COP30 and the G20 Social Summit.
Digital Advocacy for Youth and Survivors
Dina Chaerani, also known as SRHR Barbie, has transformed personal experience into collective action. As a survivor advocate, she cofounded Sexdugram, a youth led digital platform that has reached more than 70,000 young people with stigma free sexuality education. She also developed Lapor Yuk!, a mobile app with over 10,000 downloads that has supported 300 survivors of violence since 2019.
Her work demonstrates how digital spaces can break silence, challenge stigma, and connect survivors to services in contexts where civic space is shrinking. Dina emphasized the need to decolonise language in sexuality education, using local idioms and faith friendly approaches to make content accessible and inclusive. Looking ahead to COP30 and the G20, she proposed three actions, co creation of cross regional content, joint policy briefs amplifying youth voices, and ensuring that young advocates are meaningfully engaged in negotiations, not just as symbolic participants.
Bridging food security
Sherina Supersad, Youth Ambassador of Agriculture with the Network of Rural Women Producers of Trinidad and Tobago (NRWPTT), shared her advocacy journey bridging food security, climate resilience, and youth empowerment.
She highlighted how empowering women through food sustainability not only strengthens households but also transforms communities. Sherina has represented Caribbean youth at platforms like the World Food Forum in Rome and the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Mexico City. Her advocacy focuses on climate-smart agriculture, addressing coastal erosion, deforestation, and marine ecosystem challenges such as sargassum. She stressed the importance of involving youth in agribusiness and reframing farming as an opportunity for innovation and green jobs.
She also spoke about her efforts to amplify women’s voices in Parliament, linking agriculture to broader issues such as human trafficking, gender equality, and the Sustainable Development Goals. Her message was clear: youth led leadership in agriculture is central to building resilient, sustainable food systems for the future.
The third speaker, Precious Msindo, is a human rights activist and founder of Springs of Life Zimbabwe, a sex worker led organisation advocating for the dignity and rights of sex workers. Her work has focused on advocacy, health, and economic empowerment, with remarkable policy gains. Springs of Life successfully lobbied for the removal of user fees for ART in Epworth and Harare, created safer spaces for sex workers, and established partnerships with media for positive reporting. The organisation has also built bridges with government institutions, including the police, to reduce harassment and brutality, while collaborating with community leaders and parliamentarians to reduce stigma.
Despite challenges such as criminalisation, cultural barriers, and funding constraints, Precious highlighted the importance of grassroots organising, movement-building, and strategic partnerships. Her vision is to push for full decriminalisation of sex work in Zimbabwe while sustaining support systems for sex workers nationwide.
Key Takeaways and Next Steps
The Town Hall underscored that while the advocacy areas differ, digital SRHR tools in Indonesia, climate-smart agriculture in the Caribbean, or sex workers’ rights in Zimbabwe, the underlying struggles are interconnected: stigma, underfunding, and exclusion from decision making.
Next steps identified included:
- Cross regional collaboration through content co-creation and policy briefs ahead of COP30 and the G20 processes.
- Sharing tools and resources, such as Dina’s SHINE and YIELD Hub platforms, across WOSSO networks.
- Uplifting grassroots voices by ensuring that youth and women are at the centre of global advocacy spaces, not on the margins.
The session ended with a reminder that WOSSO Fellows are not only telling their stories, they are shaping the future of advocacy in their regions and beyond.