JASS at the AWID Forum

How does change happen? JASS' Executive Director, Lisa VeneKlasen, was a part of the AWID Forum's International Planning Committee and spoke in the final plenary as a wrap-up on the Forum's theme "How does change happen?" Lisa highlighted the "hows" of change, emphasizing the importance of strategies that build transformative forms of power: power within, power to, and power with. See a copy of her presentation here.

Where's the Money for Women's Rights? Cindy Clark and Lisa VeneKlasen of Just Associates participated in the AWID Funders Forum. Cindy presented the results of the research JASS conducted for AWID, looking at trends in funding for women's rights organizations in the past decade and highlighting some of the factors influencing those trends as well as ideas about how to leverage greater resources for women's rights. Lisa then structured an animated conversation with the diverse donors participating in the session.

Feminist Timelines: Just Associates designed a dynamic participatory process for engaging Forum participants in "Remembering and Reclaiming Change: Feminist Timelines for Better Futures." Participants divided into 9 regional groups, charting key milestones, gains and losses for women's rights over the last four decades.

Your Net, My Work: Pitfalls and lessons learned from coalitions, alliances and networks at regional, national and international levels. Networks are a fact of life in women's rights advocacy. They offer vital linkages, alliances and communication -- without which we are unable to tap and wield the extraordinary power of our numbers to advance our agendas and voices. But, our differences -- as people, as leaders and as organizations -- can be as powerful as our common interests. How can we understand and negotiate differences to build and consolidate the coordination we need for clout, credibility and size? How can we negotiate and coordinate our key differences in terms of size, style, funding, and more to maximise our connections and minimise the tensions caused by difference? This workshop explores these challenges through the experiences of four women's rights advocates with many years experience in the joys and pains of networking. (See workshop report)

Strategic Opportunity or Black Hole? Assessing Policy Spaces to Advance Women's Rights. Sustained pressure from women's rights and other civil society groups has led to the opening up of innumerable opportunities for participation in official policy discussions with national governments, multilateral institutions, and other powerful players. However, the agendas in these spaces are often preset or circumscribed in ways that principally serve to legitimise the institution's prior goals, and rarely offer us any real opportunities to advance a women's rights agenda and analysis on key policy issues. We will debate the pros and cons of engaging in some of the primary spaces that consume much of the time and energy of women's rights activists (eg MDGs, PRSPs, miscellaneous IFI consultations, Beijing +10, World Social Forum, and GCAP). (See workshop report)

Claiming Space for Women's Rights in Mixed Organizations and Movements. How does change happen for women's rights within mixed-sex organisations and movements? Join panellists as they share their stories and experiences of putting women's rights at the centre of movements and organisations for social justice. Based on the case studies and research for an ActionAid initiative, coordinated by Just Associates, this interactive session reflects on contributors' key insights, challenges and the lessons learned in furthering women's rights in spaces not exclusively for this purpose. This session will be valuable to those working inside mixed organisations, or for those who are trying to influence them.

Learning for a Change: Challenges of Measuring and Assessing Equality Gains (and Losses). After a three-year action research initiative to evaluate social change and advocacy efforts to transform power relations, activists, advisors and team members will reflect on how best to measure and assess change efforts. How do we measure change in an empowering way and how do we apply this learning to our actions? This panel will discuss the frameworks, approaches and questions from their work on power, change and strategy, and will ask participants to build knowledge that goes beyond the superficial listing of best practices to explore the dynamics of power, change and strategy.

Mobilising More Resources for Women's Rights Work: A Strategy Session. This year, AWID worked with Just Associates to carry out an action-research initiative called 'Where is the Money for Women's Rights Work?' The initiative identified key trends and changes in funding for women's rights over the past ten years. Women organisers and activists discussed strategies and alliances with funders in dialogues on how to develop strategies and alliances to increase the amount and quality of funding available to support women's rights work in different regions of the world. This interactive session will present the ideas and strategies for mobilising more resources for women's rights that emerged from this initiative. It will provide participants with a space to analyse these strategies, build on them and brainstorm new ones.

 

 

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