Getting Started With GAD

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