How We Research, Write and Review Our Content

We publish two kinds of material. The first is institutional: who we are, how we are governed, what our programmes do, and the policies that bind our staff. The second is editorial: analysis and practical guidance on gender-based violence, girls' education, water and sanitation, livelihoods, and how the non-governmental sector works. This page explains how the second kind is produced, because you should not have to guess.

Who writes

Articles are written and edited by the Foundation's small volunteer editorial team, and carry the byline "Editorial Team". Where an individual author or reviewer can be named without risk — and has agreed to be — they are named.

We are a volunteer-led association. We do not present an article as the work of a specialist department, and we do not claim to run a service that is described in an article as general guidance.

Where the figures come from

Every article that cites data lists its sources at the foot of the page, with links, so that you can check a figure rather than take our word for it. We draw principally on Demographic and Health Surveys, United Nations and World Health Organization publications, the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for water and sanitation, and Cameroonian government statistics.

Where a number comes from our own programme monitoring rather than from published research, we say so explicitly and state what it is based on — how many participants, over what period, measured how. We do not present internal figures as though they were national statistics, and we do not round our own numbers upward.

How articles are reviewed

Before publication, an article is read by a member of the Foundation's leadership or editorial team, who checks that the factual claims are accurate, that any description of our own work matches what we have actually done, and that nothing in it could place a participant at risk.

Articles touching on safety, violence, health or legal rights are read a second time specifically for harm: whether following the advice could put a reader in danger. We are working towards having such articles reviewed by a qualified specialist; where an article names a reviewer, that review has taken place.

Where technology assists

We use AI-assisted tools in producing our published content — for drafting, structuring, editing and translation between English and French. We think you are entitled to know that, so we are saying it plainly rather than burying it.

What that assistance does not do is decide what is true. Factual claims and statistics are checked by a person against the source cited, and any description of our own activities is checked against what was actually delivered, before publication.

We take this position because the alternative is worse in both directions. Pretending that no technology is involved would be untrue. Allowing technology to generate claims about survivors of violence without a human checking them would be irresponsible on a subject where being wrong has consequences for real people.

Corrections

If you find an error, write to contact@womenslight.org and tell us what is wrong and, if you can, what the correct information is. We correct factual errors as soon as we can verify the correction. Substantive corrections — anything that changes the meaning of a passage rather than fixing a typo — are noted on the article with the date of the change, rather than edited away silently.

We also update articles as data is revised. When an article is updated, the date shown on it changes to reflect that. We do not change dates on articles whose content has not materially changed, because a date that only signals freshness misleads the reader about how current the underlying information is.

Why we publish at all

We publish because the practical information people need in this sector is scattered, often out of date, and in the case of recruitment and internships frequently fraudulent. A young person in Buea searching for a paid internship deserves an honest answer about what is real and what is a placement-fee scam. A researcher looking for figures on gender-based violence in Cameroon deserves sources rather than assertions.

We are not a news organisation and we do not claim to be neutral about our subject. We are an association working on the rights of women and girls, and our writing reflects that position. What we do commit to is that the facts we publish are accurate, sourced and checked — and that where we are uncertain, we say so instead of writing around it.