From 24^th – 26^th October 2016, EQUALITY for Peace and Development hosted a three-day quarterly meeting with provincial coordinators from 15 provinces of Afghanistan. The aim of this meeting was to facilitate interaction among the coordinators and the central office. The Provincial Coordinators discussed their activities, advocacies, experiences, approaches they used in different provinces, challenges and suggestions for improvements of the PWNs activities.

The first day of the meeting was inaugurated with a speech delivered by Mr. Edrees Omarzad, executive director of EPD. During his speech, he motivated the participants to try hard to reach out to vulnerable women in grass-root level and advocate for ensuring their peace and security. He added that for better advocacies, communication and interaction with the related institutions such as human right commission is necessary. Then the participants were consulted regarding their experiences and challenges in implementing the activities during past quarter. The afternoon was allocated for Finance department to discuss how the central office and the coordinators can have better coordination with particular attention to budget issues.

The 2^nd day of the quarterly meeting with the provincial coordinators, started with a presentation on “advocacies at provincial level” conducted by the research department. During the presentation topics such as definition, aim and types of advocacies, approaches and advocacy for women empowerment was discussed. Furthermore, the representatives from Cordaid discussed the main findings of the research on monitoring women’s peace and security. This research is using barometer approach as a tool to collect data about women’s peace and security in grass-root level and help voice of the vulnerable women be heard. It is worth mentioning that EPD’s provincial women networks were involved in data collection for this research.

The 3^rd day of the meeting was honored by the presence of Mr. Eltayeb Omer Eltayeb, country director of CORDAID and Ms. Nasima Omari, focal point of MWPS project.  During this session the coordinators shared their experiences, opinions and concerns with the donor of this project. Mr. Eltayeb emphasized on the registration of the offices and also mentioned that preparing charter and participation in different events can be some of the recommendations for ensuring sustainability of the networks.

In addition, a group discussion was facilitated and the participants shared their views and suggestions regarding PWN activities and how they can turn PWN activities from merely a short-term project to a practical culture in their related provinces. At the end representative of each group shared the main points of the group discussion with each other.