WOCAN Newsletter - Summer/Fall 2006
In this issue:
- First Regional Meeting of Members
- WOCAN Project Workshop with PRGA
- Report from ICARRD
- New WOCAN Website
- WOCAN Interns
- From the Membership
First Regional Meeting of Members West and Central Africa
November 6 - November 9, Yaounde, Cameroon
A regional meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon will be the first of a
series of Participatory Planning Workshops to allow WOCAN and
its members (and other allies) to engage in participatory
planning in order to develop Regional Action Plans for WOCAN
for capacity and network building for women's leadership, and
organizational change for gender mainstreaming.
WOCAN currently has over 30 members in West and Central
Africa, several of whom are employed by international
organizations including Heifer International, UN and CGIAR
agencies in Cameroon; others work as researchers, development
workers and instructors in government agencies and NGOs. The
sustainability of WOCAN rests on the interests of its members
and its approach is to enlist the skills and knowledge of its
members on a voluntary basis, to develop plans of action based
on local contexts and needs of professional women for capacity
building, leadership, advocacy and activities that engage them
in the empowerment of rural women.
The meeting will be done in partnership with Heifer
International. This collaborative effort is a pilot initiative
to develop a partnership and methodology that results in the
establishment of national and regional chapters of WOCAN in
other regions of Africa and the developing world to further
the similar goals of Heifer and WOCAN.
WOCAN Project Workshop with PRGA
WOCAN Director Jeannette Gurung conducted a Research Feedback
and Planning Workshop for the project "Institutionalizing
Gender-responsive Research & Development in Agriculture and
Natural Resource Management through Women's Networks" in
collaboration with the CGIAR System-wide Program on
Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) partner in
Kathmandu, Nepal, from July 17-24, 2006. Project participants
from Laos, Sikkim, NE India and Nepal drew on their
organizational analyses of gender in their agriculture and NRM
organizations to develop plans for organizational change and
the integration of mechanisms to respond to rural women's
needs for food security and agro-enterprise development. WOCAN
and PRGA held meetings with staff and directors of partner
organizations in Sikkim, Meghalaya, Nepal and Laos to gain
their support for the Action Plans (pictured here at the
Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Shillong, India).
Report from ICARRD
WOCAN organized and facilitated the panel discussion on
"Women's Leadership for Sustainable Rural Development" on 8th
March 2006 for the International Conference in Agrarian Land
Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD), in Porte Alegre,
Brazil. Rosalud Jing de la Rosa, WOCAN Chairperson chaired and
moderated the panel discussion while Everjoice Win, Magdalena
Kropiwnicka, Eve Crowley and Kanchan Lama participated as
panel speakers.
The session emphasized ensuring the rights of rural women to
productive assets as well as promoting women leadership to
advocate on sustainable development and policy adoption.
Nepal's experience from the IFAD-supported leasehold forestry
project illustrated how to create opportunities and space for
women through strengthening women's leadership, networking,
mentoring and building solidarity among women at all levels.
Women's leadership has to deal with new challenges in the
changing context and women must be equipped with new
information, new technologies, and modern skills in order that
they can equally compete with the rest of the world.
Developing women as leaders needs to be built upon the concept
of equality. WOCAN was also represented by Kanchan Lama in a
side event sponsored by the Adelboden Group (Mountain Forum)
where she advocated on the issue of mountain women's lack of
access to land and other productive assets for meeting the
bare needs of livelihood. She advocated on the need for
ensuring women's access to land and productive assets through
agrarian land reform and rural development interventions.
WOCAN also participated in FAO organized SARD initiatives
session where a review of SARD impact was held.
New WOCAN Website
We are thrilled to re-launch the WOCAN website at
www.wocan.org! The WOCAN website has been rebuilt to provide
members with improved member services. Besides providing
access to more information and resources, the website allows
members to log-in and learn about each other through the
Member Database, which is searchable by region, gender, age,
language, field (sector), degree, needs and contributions to
WOCAN. Members can read about the skilled women and men from
over 70 countries who form our network, communicate with them
directly to share research results or pose questions, or
search for a partner for a collaborative initiative. The
Members Only section of the site is the space available for
members to post announcements, events, and publications that
are relevant to the goals of WOCAN.
Look at our new website!
WOCAN Interns
This summer WOCAN welcomed two interns into the organization.
Annie Benko and Sabrina Kay worked with the Executive Director
on a number of projects including the new website, a funding
campaign and associated PR materials, a Communications
Strategy and the WOCAN Strategic Plan. Annie is currently a
Master's Candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at
York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Sabrina is an
undergraduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY,
USA.
From the Membership
Thank you to our members for contributing the following news
items:
Master's Course: Larenstein University in the Netherlands
offers a professional Master's course with a specialization
in Gender and Agriculture. The course is of interest for
consultants who want to address gender issues in their work.
The new academic year starts October 1, 2006. See
http://www.larenstein.com/index.cfm? id=1030 for more
details.
New IFPRI Publication: Food Security in Practice: Using
Gender Research in Development (Agnes R. Quisumbing and
Bonnie McClafferty, 2006). This new practitioners' guide
from the International Food Policy Research Institute
bridges the gap between research and practice by providing
up-to-date, relevant information on why and how gender
issues, when taken into account, can improve the design,
implementation, and effectiveness of development projects
and policies. To download or order a copy, go to: h
ttp://www.ifpri.org/pubs/fspractice/sp2.asp
Classes at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival in
Fletcher, NC in October. The three classes are condensed
versions of Concord University's Rural Tourism Development
course and are entitled How to Increase Farm Income. The
classes are targeted specifically toward women, hobby and
small family farmers. The courses (1. Increasing Farm
Income: Introduction & Overview; 2. Increasing Farm Income:
Hard Copy Writing & Promotions; 3. Increasing Farm Income:
Tourism Trail Development) are intensely hands-on and
include resource materials, sources, etc.
New e-magazine: Fiber Femmes, a new e-magazine was launched
Jul/Aug 2006. Fiber Femmes will feature women across the
world who are actively involved in fiber pursuits. The first
three issues will feature women in the USA, Canada and
Romania. www.fiberfemme s.com/ - www.fi
berfemmes.blogspot.com/
This email was sent to abenko@yorku.ca, by jeannettegurung@wocan.org
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