Pathways Events
Forthcoming Events
Mainstreaming Gender & Beyond: A Leadership Practice and Skills Development Workshop for Gender Specialists in Development Agencies
Pathways are hosting a four day workshop from 3-8 May 2010 at Dunford House, Midhurst in the UK designed to enhance the leadership
practice of gender specialists
employed in large international
development organisations – bilateral, multilateral and
international NGOs. The workshop will be jointly facilitated by Rosalind Eyben and Aruna Rao, one of the world’s leading authorities on
gender equality and institutional change. For more information about the workshop and an application form please download the workshop brochure: Mainstreaming Gender & Beyond (pdf file 239 KB)
The closing date for application is 5th March 2010 but the majority of
places are likely to be confirmed before that date.
Recent Events
Info-Activism Camp 2009
Tessa Lewin and Akofa Anyidoho from the Pathways WERPC communications team joined over 130 participants in Green Valley, Bangalore, India for the Info-Activism Camp from 19 to 25th February, 2009. The one week meeting brought together rights activists, ICT experts, journalists and communications specialists from over 30 countries to learn and share skills useful for networking, movement building and advocacy.
The Info-Activism Camp was organised by Tactical Technology Collective (TTC) along with its long term partner Aspiration and funded by Oak Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Open Society Institute and Hivos. TTC is a global, non-governmental collective dedicated to equipping journalists, human rights and technology advocates, and small and medium sized NGOs, with information, communication and digital technologies to enhance their advocacy work. Primarily based in the South, TTC produces open source software, provides guides and organises ‘sources camps’ and other events to bring together activists who need technical skills and technologists who are in the field of advocacy to learn, share and engage together.
The multi-cultural, highly interactive Info-Activism camp is one of TTC’s projects to achieving their aim of impacting global advocacy work, particularly through the adoption of new technologies and utilising information for action-oriented campaigns.
The first day of the camp focused on framing what info-activism meant to the participants and defining strategies for successful advocacy campaigns, brainstorming on local ideas and offering cases studies of successful applications of some of the strategies. The agenda for the following days was based on the diversity of participant needs with corresponding peer sharing which included sessions on Strategy, Issues Areas, Visualisation and Story-telling, Cooperation and Collaboration, Security and Privacy, Publishing Information and Engaging audiences, Telephony and Voice Communications, and Increasing and Sustaining Participation. Within these sessions were sub-sessions and lab sessions for those who needed one-to-one or small group tutorials for hands-on training.
The camp generated opportunities for networking with advocates and technologists working within similar geographical regions and more importantly for those involved in similar thematic campaigns. This was greatly facilitated by the network mapping peer-experts and sessions.
Links: Info-Activism Web; Info-Activism Camp 2009 Wiki; Tactical Technology Collective; Aspiration
Feminist Tech Exchange and AWID Forum - November 2008
Tessa Lewin is a visual artist and media practitioner and is the Communications and Learning Manager at the Pathways RPC. Here is her blog from the Feminist Tech Exchange and AWID meetings.
I’m more exhausted than I’ve been in a long time, but equally exhilarated, vibing off some strange collective energy. I feel like a much older version of my teenage self, unable to sleep because there’s too much to do, too many things to learn, too many interesting people to get to know. It’s normally a feeling that fades as one becomes more exhausted and consequently more jaded, but I think the glow of excitement from this particular interaction will last for a long time, and I think it’s because many of the people here have been genuinely, collectively transformed by what they have learnt, and by their interactions. They are excited about having access to new tools and skills that they have not previously had access to. I’ve just given a 10-minute lesson in video editing to 2 Nigerian women, who have always been intimidated by the technology and by the mostly young, mostly male operators of this technology. Showing them that it’s really not rocket science was particularly rewarding and made me feel unusually useful.
Today is the first day of AWID, the Association of Women in Development, a forum that brings together academics, activists, and development practitioners from all over the world to showcase their work, debate key issues, and network with other people in the field. AWID happens once every three years. This year we’re in Cape Town.
For the past week, I’ve been at an extraordinary event, leading up to the AWID Forum, called FTX – the Feminist Technology Exchange. It was particularly interesting for me because the work that many of the people involved do has so many linkages with my own work in that it links technology and communications and advocacy.
FTX is the brainchild of the APC WNSP (Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme) in partnership with AWID and local South African partners Women’s Net. The Feminist Tech Exchange, also known as the FTX, was developed in response to calls from feminist and women's rights movements for greater understanding of emerging technologies, their potential and impact on the rights and lives of women.
Here’s an extract from one of the FTX participant’s blogs:
‘I am participating in video training.
Day 1 really scared me– theory seemed so complicated! I thought it was impossible to make the video with impact on the audience with very small skills, knowledge and no experience.
Day 2 – I tried! WOW! It works! I can do it! Making something with your own hands, not just with your brains… the process is so exciting. I even didn’t want to stop for breaks!’
Participants at FTX explored feminist practices and politics of technology, and the critical role of communication rights in the struggle to advance women’s rights. Srilatha Batliwala, on behalf of AWID, stressed in her opening address to FTX, the importance of communications technology in movement building, and the need for feminists to be involved not only in strategically utilizing technology tools, but also in shaping their development.
The theme of this year’s AWID is ‘The Power of Movements’ – strengthening movements to advance women’s rights and gender equality worldwide. Today my communications team are all wandering around the Cape Town International Conference centre, attending sessions, interviewing people, and taking photographs, proudly dressed in their FTX t-shirts, with almost a hundred other communications activists from all over the world. It feels like a movement. I haven’t felt part of something so vibrant for quite some time.
For more information see: http://www.awid.org/; http://ftx.apcwomen.org/; www.womensnet.org.za; IDS News; and Tessa's piece for The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/20/gender-equality-technology
AWID Forum 2008: The Power of Movements
Over 1,500 women's rights leaders and activists met in Cape Town, South Africa for the 11th Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) Forum from 14-17 November 2008. Around 15 members of the Pathways Programme (from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Brazil, Ghana and Egypt) joined them to present panels on:
- The NGOization of Women's movements and its Implications for Feminist Organizing
(flyer Pdf file 252KB) (presenter bios Pdf file 138KB) - Women's Empowerment: What do Men have to do with it? (co-organised with BRIDGE)
(flyer Pdf file 277KB) (presenter bios Pdf file 52KB)
Prior to the event starting, Pathways joined up with our sister RPC - Women's Empowerment in Muslim Contexts (WEMC) to host a Roundtable at the Cullinan Hotel on 13 November on 'Negotiating Alliances, Overcoming Opposition:
Women’s Movements and other Social Movements'
(flyer Pdf file 98KB; Programme Pdf file 131KB).
For more information on the Forum see the AWID Forum website.
Partners: 
