
Media Kit
Project Overview
The Women Friendly Cities Challenge (WFCC) is a living library of Wise Practices from around the world that help make cities more women friendly. The idea was born at the UN Habitat III conference in 2016, and WFCC officially launched at the World Urban Forum in 2018. The WFCC’s vision is to become a living virtual library where organizations can share knowledge, inspire innovative practices, and create new ways of working together to address the complexities of the 21st century. The website will serve as a call for action that encourages cities around the world to become more women friendly.
Press contact: wfcc[at]womentransformingcities.org
Press + Media Coverage

A History of the WFCC, by Joy Masuhara

‘Build safe and female-friendly cities’, by Daily News Sri Lanka

Giving Women a Seat at the Table – with Ellen Woodsworth [Podcast], Simon Fraser University
About the Project
Who is welcome to participate?
The Women Friendly Cities Challenge appreciates and accepts submissions from all sectors—governments, civil society and grassroots organizations, the private sector, academia, and beyond. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join the challenge and share practices that make cities around the world women-friendly.
What are Wise Practices?
We chose the term “Wise Practice” as opposed to “Best Practice”, as described by Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux and Brian Calliou: “Wise Practices are locally appropriate actions, tools, principles or decisions that contribute significantly to the development of sustainable and equitable social conditions. They evolve and are refined as individual and community experience and knowledge expand.”
Media Assets




Download WFCC Logo [PNG 606 x 352]
Our team has prepared a social media kit for partner organizations that wish to help us promote the WFCC through their online channels. The social media kit contains suggested social media copy, Women Transforming Cities account info and hashtags, and social media posts in various sizes.
Founding Team

Ellen Woodsworth is the founder of Women Transforming Cities International Society and Co-Chairperson. She works to make cities work for self identified women and girls all over the world from local neighbourhoods to global gatherings like UN Habitat 3. She thinks that women and girls work for cities but cities don’t work for women and girls. She believes cities must put a gendered intersectional lens and use disaggregated data on policies, programmes, budgets, funding, staffing and governance in order to create women-friendly cities.
Ellen is an international speaker and urban consultant on gender and intersectional planning. She is a former Vancouver City Councillor and was their representative on the Executive of Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee. Ellen provides workshops for cities and NGO’s using “Advancing Equity and Inclusion a Guide for Municipalities”. She spoke at the UN Habitat 3 conferences in Prague and in Quito and at the Smart Sustainable Cities conference in Montevideo, Uruguay as well as participating in the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights meeting about the “Right to the City” and housing. She also spoke at WUF 9 in Kuala Lumpur and moderated the Women Transforming Cities launch of the Women Friendly Cities Challenge. She spoke at WUF 10 on LGTBQI2S issues in Abu Dhabi and been a consultant to UN Habitat on LGTBQi2S issues. She is coordinating the Hot Pink Municipal Campaign, which focuses on 11 issues that could make cities women-friendly. She gives talks on how to put a gendered intersectional lens on everything from climate change, housing, transit, electoral reform and COVID 19.

Joy Masuhara has been actively involved in WTC’s participation in the UN Habitat III process as a participant and speaker both in Prague and Quito. She works in Vancouver as a physician in the area of older adult mental health and has a special interest in how multicultural issues impact health outcomes. She has served on several committees and boards related to health care and has been a speaker on various topics such as dementia, polypharmacy, and multicultural issues in dementia. Prior activist work includes being a litigant in the same sex marriage case, which resulted in Canada becoming the 3rd country in the world to legalize same sex marriage in 2003. She is a former member of the Katari Taiko drumming group.

Celene Fung is an accomplished Urban Planner with 20 years experience in building inclusive healthy communities. Her career includes leading interdisciplinary teams in the planning and designing cities, institutional facilities and community projects for government agencies, non-profits organizations and private businesses. She is currently focused on international development work. Celene recently returned from Mongolia, where she helped launch the Mongolian Geographic Indicators Yak Fibre Community Economic Development Project. The Vision of the Project is to create a sustainable economic model to improve rural livelihoods by promoting Mongolian yak fibre to international markets and reinvesting profits to support local economic development initiatives. In support of her professional portfolio, Celene’s background includes a Masters of Arts in Community and Regional Planning, a Bachelors of Arts in Geography and Archaeology, and Certificates in Urban Design and Spatial Information Systems. Celene truly believes that improving access for vulnerable community members and empowering women and girls in leadership roles will help transform our communities to be more equitable and democratic for everyone.

Submit a Wise Practice + Take the Challenge Today
We welcome submissions from all sectors: Governments, civil society and grassroots organizations, the private sector, academia, and beyond.
Submit your Wise Practices now and show the world how you are making your city women friendly!
See here for more information and submission guidelines.