Dibya Gurung, WOCAN Core Associate, facilitated a workshop to develop Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) strategy for The Himalayan Grassroots Women’s Natural Resource Management Association (HIMAWANTI) Nepal from 19-23 August in Kathmandu, Nepal. There were 22 participants (20 women and two men) who were HIMAWANTI’s program staff and representatives from HIMAWANT’s chapters from 20 districts. The objectives of the workshop were to provide inputs for the development of HIMAWANTI GESI Strategy and to train the participants on GESI mainstreaming in HIMAWANTI.
The training workshop had the following four sessions:
- Introduction to gender concepts and gender analysis framework;
- GESI situation analysis by applying the gender analysis framework;
- Defining GESI objectives, outcomes and developing activities for the GESI strategy;
- Developing an action plan with indicators for the GESI Strategy.
After the introduction of the key gender concept and discussing the GESI gaps and challenges in the objectives of HIMAWANTI’s Five Year Strategy (2013-2017), the participants identified the key GESI problems of HIMWANTI as
- LEADERSHIP: Lack of leadership on GESI for institutional development
- ACCOUNTABILITY: Women’s leadership is not accepted, respected or recognized by other institutions.
- PARTICIPATION: Social inclusion takes precedence over gender equality.
- CAPACITY: Lack of capacity to document women and socially excluded group’s access to economic and technical resources.
After the problem identification, objectives, outcomes with indicators and action plan were developed. The inputs from the training workshop and the action plan developed by the participants will be incorporated in the HIMWANTI GESI Strategy.
The workshop was co-facilitated and technical support provided by Kishor Pradhan, knowledge management and learning specialist from Development Knowledge Management and Innovation Services Private Limited (DeKMIS).