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DAWN Training
Institute 2007
DAWN
will hold its third feminist advocacy training programme, the DAWN
Training Institute (DTI) in November 2007. It
will be a three-week intensive training programme. The date and venue will be announced later.
The DAWN Training Institute was inaugurated in Bangalore,
India, in 2003 and has been followed by a number of regional
programmes. The training programmes are designed for young feminist
activists from the South who are engaged in, or have strong interest
in, global advocacy work for social and gender justice. The
programme draws on DAWN’s feminist with emphasis on the interlinkage
of issues under the four DAWN research themes of Political Economy
of Globalisation, including Gender and Trade, Political Ecology and
Sustainability, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and
Political Restructuring and Social Transformation. The Programme
also draws on network’s considerable experiences in UN conference
processes and other sites of struggle, including the women’s
movement and the global civil society movement against economic
globalisation, as well as regional, sub-regional and national
processes.
The
broad aims of the institute are to build capacity among young
feminist activists from the south, especially in understanding
linkages between different issues and advocacy agendas, particularly
those concerned with social,
economic
and gender justice; to strengthen feminist advocacy work at global
and regional level; and to deepen analysis in some complex areas
aimed at alternative paradigms of development beyond the market
economy. It is intended to prepare young feminists for the
challenges of working for gender justice in the present global
geopolitical and economic context.
Participants
will be trained by experienced feminist advocates who will assist
them to understand the changing terrain of the struggle for gender
justice. They will be exposed to the ideas and work of other
feminists/activist scholars and will examine critical issues under
each theme in the context of current debates at the global level,
and their interlinkages with issues under other themes.
Due to
limited scholarships, would-be applicants are encouraged to source
for their own funding. DAWN would provide partial
support.
For more details please
contact the DAWN
Secretariat
Download
DTI Application form as word
or pdf
DAWN South-East
Asia
Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy Institute
(YWLI), 13th-18th June, Bangkok.
The Young Women's Leadership and Advocacy Institute
(YWLI) was held in Bangkok as a collaborative effort. AWID, CREA
(from India) and Shirkat Gah (from Pakistan) were partners of DAWN
in this collaboration. AWID raised all the funds for the training
institute. The process of collaboration included coming up with a
training module, dividing responsibilities as facilitators and being
a part of the selection process while disseminating the information
to our networks and partners in the region.
Altogether 30
participants from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka
and India) and South East Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Philippines,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China (Hong Kong) Myanmar, Cambodia
and Laos) were selected representing a wide array of organizations.
A number of applications were received from the disabled community
out of which. 2 were chosen. The age group was 22-30 years with the
oldest 28 years and the youngest 21, all with young fresh energy and
faces.
Process - The highlight for DAWN
was the initiative taken by DAWN Training Institute graduates of
2003 in this process who were in the forefront at every step. The
6-day training was divided into several ‘modules’ guided by an
explorative process with the participants. The training agenda was
not ‘pre-set’ in that sense, but worked out using broad thematic
areas as a sounding board to frame the sessions. The substantive
areas of gender, economic and human rights were designed as
‘skill-building’ sessions. The first day after introductions,
participants in sub-regional groups mapped out themes they wished to
be addressed and this became the basis for finalizing the training
agenda. There was a big demand for conceptual clarity on the
basics what is gender, what/who is a feminist, how do we understand
economic frameworks, what are reproductive and sexual rights, the
WTO and so on. Along with this “Movement Building” and “Feminist
Advocacy as a Strategy for Change” were two dedicated sessions. Both
participants and facilitators used creative pedagogy and reading
groups were initiated for one compulsory reading every night.
DTIs – Tashia Peterson and Jo Villenueva took charge of this session
every morning before the sessions began. The other two, Anasuya and
Shamillah guided the advocacy and movement building sessions, while
the substantive skill-building ones was divided among Joanna of
AWID (for Economic frameworks), Pramada Menon of CREA (Human
Rights) and Vanita Mukherjee of DAWN with Anasuya (for Gender
Frameworks).
Three volunteers from among the participants gave a
feedback to the facilitators on a day-to-day basis after monitoring
the sessions and participants inputs. This helped to plan the
training very effectively for the next day. The participants lead
most of the energizers. The presence of disabled young women forced
us all to be sensitive to their needs, especially for
energizers.
Outcomes - The Gender Frameworks
session after dealing with concepts that moved away from a purely
hetero-normative approach, examined the ‘political’ and ‘technical’
use of gender and went into a social history of Feminism including
the different schools as they emerged. There was as lot of confusion
(and discomfort) about what is feminism among the participants. It
was a fascinating session as these are very young women in
post-feminist days reaping the ‘benefits’ of some of struggles waged
by our generation of women, like accessing well-established women’s
studies departments in their university, getting funding for women’s
rights’ work and so on. Most of them were in their early teens when
the slogan ‘women rights are human rights’ gained currency,
yet there is a chasm in their sense of history of where it all came
from and what it is all about. There is a sense of taking things for
granted or feeling confused about what is feminism today. One of the
questions that emerged on the mapping issues day was, ‘ Is Feminism
and Gender Equality the same’?
The Human Rights session was
kicked off by the very powerful and moving documentary, ‘The Vienna
Tribunal’ filmed live in Vienna in 1993. It fleshed out graphically
the issue of ‘women’s rights are human rights’ quite eloquently. An
exercise focusing on a true-life case study from India of
sterilizing physically/ mentally challenged women (as there are no
care-takers to handle menstruation) was extremely challenging, but
the manifold issues that emerge out of this case around reproductive
(and sexual) rights could not be discussed at length that day.
Pramada of CREA did a whole session on sexual rights with another
very interesting exercise the next day. Some of questions that were
raised on the first day by the participants while mapping issues
were, “What is the history of HRs”?, How do we deal with human
rights when one group gain precedence over the other? i.e.Community
Rights vs Individual Rights”, “How to integrate Women’s Rights and
movement into other social movements? How do they work?” and “Is
there a need to look at human rights and women’s rights separately”?
In the Advocacy sessions, the focus was local, national and
regional. This was done in sub-regional groups around issues the
group prioritized. The idea was to discuss advocacy strategies after
every case study, the strengths and weaknesses and it was extremely
lively and engaging. Along with this approach (that was
meaningful for a regional group), I felt a short presentation on the
experiences of women’s movement’s advocacy at the international
level (the UN for instance) for historical information would have
rounded up the session well, and connected some of SRHR issues
emerging from Cairo and Beijing. The Movement Building session was
designed around issues identified by the participants.
The workshop can be summed up this way: “The
participants think we brought together extraordinary experiences and
insights that helped to shape a process that delivered the kind of
results it did. My inbox is inundated with thank
yous from the participants and until I left on Sunday - many of them
dropped off notes at my room to share how much this meeting has
meant to them - how it has helped them to see things differently and
how they will continue to build on the process we initiated at
Bangkok.” Shamillah Wilson
DAWN
Pacific
From the 30 June to 3 July, over 800 women from
across the Asia Pacific region met near Bangkok for the Asia Pacific
NGO Forum on Beijing +10. We were a diverse and colourful group full
of passion, experience and for four days in the tropical heat of
Thailand our discussions as the women of the Asia Pacific region
took centre stage.
Four plenary sessions put forward the issues
of
v Celebrating women’s gains and confronting women’s
issues
v Asian Women in Muslim Societies
v Transnational
Women’s Movements: Challenges and Future Politics in the Period of
Globalisation and War
v Women’s Rights, Democracy and the
Challenge for Sustainable Development
Global trends such as religious fundamentalism,
conservative backlash and terrorism and increased militarism were
highlighted as issues which would particularly threaten or
compromise gains for women won so far. The conference reaffirmed
commitment to the Beijing Platform for Action and recognised
successes so far. It also recognised challenges still being faced
such as the uneven implementation of the Beijing Platform for
Action, backlash against equality and shifts in the macro
environment which have systematically eroded women’s status (from
conference statement).
Aside from workshops evaluating progress on the 12
key areas of the Beijing Platform for Action, special workshops were
held which critically examined the tools and strategies of global
women’s advocacy. These included workshops looking at Gender
Mainstreaming, NGO-GO relationships and Feminist Strategies.
Feminist Strategies in Sites of Resistance was a workshop held by
women organising the Feminist Dialogues (FD) as part of the World
Social Forum (WSF). This session was introduced by a discussion of
the evolution, history and conflicts around the WSF and the FD; as
well as the role and place of the feminist movement within the
women’s movement; an issue relevant to the conference itself – this
was a women’s movement conference not a feminist conference – not
all women’s-issue-NGO-women are feminist, and interpretations and
practices of feminism are contested and evolving anyway.
The second part of the workshop discussed the
importance of feminist strategy – how do we contend with the global
threats of militarism, terrorism, imperialism, religious
fundamentalism, neoliberalism and conservative backlash? A call was
made for strategic feminist action rather than reactive action. This
means comprehensive strategies about how the Beijing Platform is at
risk of being renegotiated in a global political environment where
neo-conservatism risks key achievements for women’s rights (see DAWN
Inform April 2003). Gigi Francisco outlined the UNESCAP processes
and advised how national groups can lobby their representatives to
prevent delegates having the opportunity to renegotiate. The
significance of the Forum Statement rather than a traditional Forum
Declaration is part of this strategy of preventing new (less
progressive) goals and renegotiation and focusing on shortfalls in
the implementation of the Beijing Platform we already have.
The
Feminist Dialogues run parallel to the World Social Forum, and has
been set up as a space where like the WSF, people or feminists from
diverse backgrounds come together for dialogue between diverse
points of view and rather than reaching consensus or negotiating a
solution participants can find their own answers. Sunila Abeysekera
outlined that the Feminist Dialogues are important because of the
increasing fragmentation of the women’s movement, and that such a
forum allows reengagement for groups alienated by labels and
constructions around what the women’s movement is, or what feminism
is.
The conference also reinforced a relatively new
youth movement determined to forge an autonomous identity and
establish mechanisms for engaging substantively rather than
tokenistically with the wider women’s NGO movement at conferences
such as this. The youth contingent was coordinated by the Network of
Asia Pacific Youth (NAPY) and the Youth Declaration built on
previous NAPY work and was put together during informal meetings
throughout the conference. The processes around youth engagement are
still in flux though have much potential to make a meaningful
contribution to future discussions in the region.
A draft version of the Purple Book is available at
the forum website: http://ap-ngo-forum.isiswomen.org.
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