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From Marginalisation to Self-Agency

Soar Your Way – Rights-Based Teen Girl Empowerment Platform

📍 Location: Syria (3 regions) · Partnership anchored in Morocco
🗓 Duration: 15 months
🟢 Status: Large Project – Platform Pilot
🎯 Focus Areas: Girls’ rights · Feminist leadership · Civil society capacity · Youth empowerment · Advocacy platforms
💰 Funder: Civil Society Fund (CISU)

About the project

Soar Your Way strengthens Syrian civil society organisations to deliver rights-based teen girl empowerment using a digital, locally adaptable platform—building agency, leadership, and advocacy capacity for girls and the organisations that support them.

At a Glance

Soar Your Way pilots the SYW Platform, an innovative digital implementation model based on Project Soar’s award-winning 25-workshop empowerment curriculum.

The project strengthens three local Syrian CSOs to design and implement context-specific teen girl empowerment programmes—while simultaneously empowering 75 marginalised teen girls and laying the foundation for a scalable, Syrian-owned girls’ rights ecosystem.

The Challenge

Following over a decade of conflict—and a dramatic political transition in late 2024—Syrian society faces a fragile rebuilding process.

Teen girls are among the most affected:

  • Harmful gender norms restrict rights, mobility, and education

  • High prevalence of child marriage and gender-based violence

  • Limited access to sexual and reproductive health information

  • Triple discrimination for disabled girls and camp returnees

While many CSOs work with vulnerable communities, few have tailored tools or capacity to deliver structured, rights-based programming specifically for teen girls—at a moment when civil society’s role is more critical than ever.

Our partnership role

Civil Connections Community Foundation (CCCF) works in partnership with Project Soar as a co-creator, mentor, and coordinating lead.

Together, we:

  • Strengthen Syrian CSOs’ organisational and programmatic capacity

  • Pilot and refine a scalable empowerment platform

  • Ensure donor compliance, learning, and documentation

  • Bridge grassroots feminist practice with regional and international networks

What we intentionally do not do:

  • Implement programming directly in Syria

  • Replace local leadership or decision-making

  • Impose uniform program models

Expected outcomes

By the end of the project:

  • 3 Syrian CSOs report significantly increased capacity to implement girls’ rights programming

  • 75 teen girls demonstrate increased self-knowledge, confidence, and resilience

  • 6 grassroots women facilitators trained and active

  • A validated SYW Platform ready for scale across Syria

  • A seed network for a national feminist community of practice

The deeper shift: girls move from silence to self-defined futures.

Our working hypotheses

  • Digital platforms can unlock access in fragile contexts—if locally owned

  • CSO capacity is as important as beneficiary outcomes

  • Feminist leadership grows through trust, not speed

  • Adaptability is essential for sustainability in volatile settings

What we hope to follow this project

Soar Your Way is designed as a foundation, not a one-off intervention.

Next steps include:

  • Scaling the SYW Platform across Syria

  • Expanding the girls’ rights community of practice

  • Adapting the model to other fragile contexts

  • Integrating learning into regional feminist advocacy

The long-term ambition: Syrian girls shaping Syrian futures.

Alignment with Civil Connections’ Theory of Change

This project contributes by:

  • Strengthening local civil society capacity

  • Translating lived experience into collective empowerment

  • Supporting locally owned, feminist systems change

  • Bridging grassroots action with scalable platforms

It reflects CCCF’s belief that sustainable change happens when those most affected lead—equipped, connected, and trusted.