The fourth global DAWN Training Institute (DTI) was held in Siem Reap, Cambodia from 9 to 27 October 2011. Twenty-seven young women activists from Latin America, Asia, Pacific, Caribbean, and Africa attended this three-week training. The programme draws on DAWN’s Southern feminist analysis which inter-links issues under the four themes of Political Economy of Globalisation (PEG), Political Ecology and Sustainability (PEAS), Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), and Political Restructuring and Social Transformation (PRST). The training builds on DAWN’s experience over 25 years working in global UN processes, as well as contributing to multiple and interlinked regional and national sites of struggle against neoliberal economic globalization, and toward gender equality, sustainable development and universal human rights.
Zo Randriamaro, DAWN’s Training Coordinator, headed DAWN’s international training team composed of DAWN’s executive committee and resource persons including Francoise Girard for SRHR, Norma Maldonado for PEAS, and Thida Khus, who situated the gender movement in Cambodia.
This global training intiative by DAWN is designed to share organizational experiences with the next generation of women activists and to encourage shared work to build a sustainable south feminist movement that promotes justice and social transformation in what DAWN describes as the “fierce new world” of interlinked crises of food, fuel, finance and climate change. The challenges are mighty and urgent, and resources few for many young feminists from the economic south.
Young participants from the South were thrilled to engage and learn directly with DAWN feminist scholar-advocates on a wide array of DAWN analyses, debates, and experiences. The DTI used a multi-method approach in which participants took part in lectures and discussions, art activities, small group exercises, and reading reflections.
Sessions included work on global health financing, the financial crisis, global economic governance, sexual and reproductive health and rights including specific attention to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. The participants also worked with facilitators to trace trajectories from the green revolution to Rio +20; to chart major herstorical moments of global south feminist work; and shared their own feminist challenges in working on issues such as political restructuring and social transformation.
There were intensive and personally demanding skill-building sessions to strengthen advocacy for local, national, regional, and global platforms, as well as more general skills sessions on oral and written communication, debating and dialogue, speeches and interventions, etc. Participants were also encouraged to affirm and share their accumulated knowledge from the DTI experience as they developed and conducted structured learning experience modules using DAWN’s inter-linkage analysis.
Participant feedback has once again affirmed the strength of impact that this intensive training programme has on the analyses, advocacies, and activisms of feminists from the global south. One participant shared,
“It was very useful for me to go through the exercise of how many issues are inter-linked in terms of issues in PEG, SRHR, PEAS and PRST; and being able to see the connections. I think that an inter-linkages analysis is key but it also brings its own challenges. It means that as feminists we need to have multiple skills, multiple fluencies, and multiple technical competencies. Being able to be in the DTI has been useful in bringing out these trainings. Now, for me, rather than going through that process of specializing in a certain area, I have the opportunity to broaden my knowledge across several fields.”
Claire Slatter, Chair of the DAWN Board, commended the young feminists in her closing remarks for bringing in and sharing their “wealth of experience that contributed immensely to the DTI’s success”. Claire shared, “I hope you found the DTI intellectually enriching, strategically useful, and personally empowering.” She also emphasized the challenges that feminists from the South face in what DAWN describes as the “fierce new world” of interlinked crises of food, fuel, finance and climate change, “These times call for brave action, but also clear headed analysis and wise judgment on how to act.”
Congratulations to the wonderful participants of the 2011 DAWN Global Training Institute! The DAWN training team echoes Claire’s well wishes, “We wish you strength and wisdom in your future work. We want to thank you for joining us in this project of feminist capacity-building, which is ultimately aimed at passing on the baton to a new generation of scholar-activists and negotiators working for the interlinked goals of gender justice, and economic, political and environmental justice.”
Know more about the latest DAWN Training Institute via DAWN Informs (January 2012 Issue) and DAWN’s Facebook Page. To view pictures of DTI 2011 in Cambodia, you may visit our website’s photo gallery.
Feel free to share widely all DTI materials with credits to DAWN and help promote feminist learning!
