Action Learning Workshops

From February 23-27, 2009 Gender at Work held a series of action-learning workshops as part of a UNDG project and Inception Meeting held in New York. The meeting included 4 representatives from self-selected country teams from Morocco, Albania and Nepal, as well as staff from UNICEF, UNIFEM and Gender at Work. It marked the beginning of a 2-year process intended to assist these three country teams to implement strong gender equality projects and will serve as a pilot for other countries.

The objectives of this inception meeting were:

• To build a learning community
• Help the country teams assess key factors in their situation related to implementation of a successful project
• Discuss relevant frameworks for thinking about gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Develop or strengthen existing plans for implementation of significant gender equality projects in the three countries.

The meeting and workshops were held in two phases. The first was an analysis phase where each country team will meet separately with Gender at Work team to develop a clear picture of the history of work on gender in their country team and the various factors that are likely to affect the possibility of successful outcomes. Each country team worked for one day with members of the Gender at Work team.

In the second phase of the meeting, the three teams worked together. The focus was on sharing information about the work of the various country teams, building a learning community, thinking about various conceptual frameworks, developing or deepening plans for implementation of gender equality projects in the countries and then getting feedback from peers and the Gender at Work team.