Last year at our Regional Meetings, the Gender and
Development Committee asked Volunteers what the most salient challenges were
that they faced in terms of Gender work in their communities. Simply “getting started” was one of the most
frequently heard responses.
And we agree! There
is a lot of work that should be done before jumping into the actual programmatic
side of doing Gender and Development work.
There are topics of all types of emotional and cultural sensitivity, and
while some resources and ideas are a lot easier to implement than others, we as
a GAD Committee have tried to come up with resources for volunteers to use in
finding out exactly what kind of work is suitable for the community being
served.
With that being said, we are really excited to introduce our
newest toolkit: A handbook essentially serving to help Volunteers lay out a
foundation for gender work in their communities, including the development of a
safe space for people seeking a community of trust in their everyday lives. The first part of this toolkit encourages
volunteers to look at both themselves and their communities, encouraging
critical thinking around existing norms, why they may exist, and whether the
underlying nature of them is positive and can manifest within the larger
community. The goal of this section is
for volunteers to understand the nature of gender within their community to be
able to best decide what a first step of implementation can be, whether it is a
conversation with a few close friends, or a community wide campaign. The second part of the toolkit focuses on
creating safe spaces within communities through intentional step-taking on what
spaces exist within communities and how to cultivate a sense of trust,
community, and safety within them.
We know that this can be tough work to start, but I don’t
think we can find a volunteer who regrets getting into Gender and Development
work once it has been started. We hope
this new resource can help volunteers get empowered and impassioned about
gender in Morocco.
Check out the new toolkit here, and feel free to let us know
your thoughts through our e-mail, gadmaroc@gmail.com,
or through the electronic evaluation found within the toolkit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwApjX6qrWb6T043ZG9obnBKNms/view?pli=1
