Call for Applications: CREA's Feminist Leadership, Movement Building, and Rights Institute South Asia
28 January - 1 February 2013
Kathmandu, Nepal
To apply online, click here. If you experience difficulty with the online method, download the application from CREA's website (www.creaworld.org) and e-mail the completed form to Sushma Luthra at sluthra@creaworld.org or to CREA at crea@creaworld.org. Send any queries to Ms Luthra as well.
Applications are due on or before 10 December 2012.
The Feminist Leadership, Movement Building, and Rights Institute--South Asia is an annual five-day residential training programme designed by CREA. Formerly known as the South Asia Movement Building and Human Rights Institute, this Institute is designed for women working in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in South Asia in mid-level leadership positions. It aims to build the conceptual clarity of participants on gender, feminism, feminist leadership, and movement building, and their links to human rights in the South Asian context. It also aims to strengthen feminist leadership, strategies, and collective power of young women for their voices and demands to be heard-at the level of the community to the highest levels of decision-making.
Course Content
This Institute offers mid-level women leaders in NGOs an opportunity to enhance their conceptual understanding as well as build their skills to do effective activism and advocacy on human rights. The Institute will build:
* Conceptual understanding of participants on gender, feminism, and movement building, and their links to human rights.
* Strategic skills by looking at and analysing some social movements and successful advocacy campaigns in South Asia.
* Communication skills that will enable participants to prepare effective written communication material, social messaging in videos and documentaries, and use information and communications technology (ICT) for human rights work.
Using a movement-building lens, the Institute will allow participants to build their knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of movement building, synthesised from analyses of global movements. Additionally, participants will identify the different intersections, interactions, common spaces, and challenges that social movements encounter when collaborating on issues of women's human rights. From this, they will critically assess the pre-existing resources of the women's movement in the South Asia region. They will also identify and explore concrete strategies to strengthen links between movements to advance women's human rights more collectively.
A team of feminist activists, who have done trailblazing work in the field of women's human rights, teach at this Institute, using classroom instruction, group work, case studies, simulation exercises, and films. The resource persons include:
Core Faculty
Srilatha Batliwala is an India-based Scholar Associate with the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). Her current work focuses on feminist movement building, strengthening women's organisations, exploring feminist leadership concepts and practices, and monitoring and evaluation. Since the 1970s, Srilatha has worked for gender equality and women's empowerment through grassroots activism, advocacy, teaching, research, training, grant-making, organisational development, and popular education. Up to the mid-1990s, she focused on building movements of poor urban and rural women in India. She, then, moved on to work in several premier international institutions, including the Ford Foundation, New York, the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University, and since 2007, AWID. Srilatha has written extensively on women's issues, especially publications that bridge the worlds of theory and practice. Her most recent publications are Feminist Leadership for Social Transformation (for CREA); Capturing Change in Women's Realities: A Critical Overview of Current Monitoring and Evaluation, and Changing Their World: Concepts and Practices of Women's Movements (both for AWID); and an edited volume, Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction (Kumarian Press, August 2006).
Participating Faculty
Ayesha Khan* is a Senior Researcher at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi, Pakistan. Her work covers a range of issues, particularly gender and development, reproductive health, social policy, and conflict/refugee issues in the region. She has extensive experience in qualitative research design. Currently, she is studying the effects of paid work on women's empowerment in Pakistan, as part of a multi-country consortium, Pathways to Women's Empowerment. She is also working on a study to measure the costs of unsafe abortion-related morbidity and mortality in Pakistan, funded by the Packard Foundation. She has a Masters degree in South Asian Studies from School of Oriental and African Studies, UK, and a Bachelors degree in Philosophy from Yale University, US.
Maya Ganesh has Masters degrees in Psychology from Delhi University, India, and in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Sussex, UK. Since 1995, she has worked as a researcher, writer, and activist with women's rights and international NGOs and academic institutions in India on gender rights, violence against women, sexuality rights, HIV/AIDS prevention with young people, and Internet and mobile phone use, policy, and communication rights. She has worked with the Association of Progressive Communications' Women's Networking Support Program; UNICEF; Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; Point of View, Mumbai; and CREA, New Delhi. She has published non-fiction writing about gender, women's rights, pulp magazines, sexuality, the Internet, and mobile phones. She is the Program Director of the Evidence and Action Program at Tactical Tech and lives in Bengaluru, India.
Maheen Sultan is one of the Founders of the Centre for Gender and Social Transformation at the BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University, a regional centre on research, teaching, and policy related to gender and social transformation based in Bangladesh. She is a development practitioner with over 25 years of experience in working for NGOs, donors, the UN, Grameen Bank, and the Bangladeshi government in a range of capacities, from direct programme management to policy formulation. She is a member of Naripokkho, a Bangladeshi women's activist organisation, and a Board member of Caritas Bangladesh and Utsho Bangladesh. She is also a member of the ADB External Forum on Gender and Development. Her current research interests include women's organising and movements and women's work and mobilising.
Rita Thapa is widely recognised for her groundbreaking work in founding Tewa. Rita has over 25 years experience as a feminist educator and community activist, initiating and supporting institutions for women's empowerment and for peace in Nepal and Asia, as well as internationally. She is currently involved with Nagarik Aawaz, an initiative for conflict transformation and peace-building in Nepal, and Dhaka Weaves. She is known and appreciated around the world as an inspiring resource person on feminist leadership, and peace and development, and has extensive experience in building links among community, non-governmental, governmental, and academic institutions. She has served on the International Committee of the Regional Center for Strategic Studies, Sri Lanka; and is the past Board member and Chair of the Global Fund for Women and the International Board of Urgent Action Fund. Rita is an Ashoka fellow and one of the 1000 peace women around the globe.
*To be confirmed
For brochure with complete information on resource persons, visit www.creaworld.org.
Organiser
CREA is a feminist human rights organisation, based in New Delhi, India. It is one of the few international women's rights organisations based in the global South, led by Southern feminists, which works at the grassroots, national, regional, and international levels. CREA's mission is to build feminist leadership, advance women's human rights, and expand sexual and reproductive freedoms.
Participants
Women working in NGOs in South Asia, in mid-level leadership positions, and committed to human rights work are eligible. Twenty-five participants will be selected based on their application form.
Participants are required to stay for the duration of the course.
Cost
The Institute is supported by the Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) Fund, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, allowing CREA to cover tuition, boarding, and lodging costs for all participants. Participants must cover their own travel expenses. A limited number of travel scholarships from CREA are available on a need basis.
Dates and Venue
The Feminist Leadership, Movement Building, and Rights Institute--South Asia will be held in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 28 January-1 February 2013.
Applications are due on or before 10 December 2012. Application received after the due date will not be considered.
Please send your applications to Sushma Luthra:
Email: sluthra@creaworld.org<mailto:sluthra@creaworld.org>
Fax: +91 11 2437 7708
Post: 7 Mathura Road, 2nd Floor, Jangpura B, New Delhi-110014, India
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