Women's Learning Partnership (WLP), 2000-present

After leaving the Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) in 1999, Mahnaz Afkhami began work on a new project with Jordanian lawyer and activist Asma Khader, Lebanese activist Afifa Dirani Arsanios, and Malaysian activist Sharifah Tahir. Different from the large foundation SIGI, the women wanted to create an organization focused on grassroots movements.

It was decided that this new organization would be called the Women's Learning Partnership and would be based out of the United States. With the help of Moroccan writer and activist Fatema Mernissi, Afkhami began to arrange meetings, press conferences, and briefings with women policy makers and reporters. One notable meeting occured in April that year in which Afkhami and Mernissi met with then First Lady Hillary Clinton to discuss the status of women in the Muslim world.

In 2000, Afkhami, with five other women leaders, civil rights leader and founder of the Children's Defense Fund Marian Wright Edelman, academic and NGO leader involved in Brazil's political transition to democracy Jacqueline Pitanguy, Ethiopian activist and founding member of the Association of African Women for Research and Development Zenebeworke Tadesse, cofounder of the Foundation for Human Security in Pakistan Khadija Haq, and future founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Nigerian Democracy Hafsat Abiola, officially founded WLP.

A partnership of locally-led, grassroots-focused national women's organizations dedicated to advancing women's human rights and democratic development, WLP would follow a unique model of activism. Organizations would be selected from the Global South based off their local, regional, and global work with a special emphasis on the local aspect. Furthermore, the organizations would be involved in the decision-making of the WLP while remaining independent and autonomous.

On June 2, 2000, WLP held its first conference entitled "Cultural Boundaries and Cyber Spaces: Women's Voices on Empowerment, Leadership, and Technology". Nearly 200 participants, a majority from the non western countries, attended the conference which took place at New York University in New York City, New York.

Within one year, WLP's founding organizations, Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM) of Morocco, BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights of Nigeria, and the Women's Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) of Palestine, were joined by Sisterhood is Global/Jordan (SIGI-J) of Jordan, and the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) of Afghanistan.

In June of 2001, WLP drafted its first manual Leading to Choices: A leadership Training Handbook for Women. The manual functioned as an adaptable tool to lead discussions and workshops. The manual was officially published in November of 2002 and was promptly translated into six different languages.

Within six years, WLP grew to include twenty grassroots organizations from four regions of the world.