The Courage to Change: Fostering a New Dialogue in ECARMU SII on Womens Empowerment

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The Courage to ChangeFostering a New Dialogue
in ECARMU SII on Womens Empowerment
Allison Burden, Gretchen Lyons, Emmanuel Mugabi,
Elisa Martinez, Amy Wing Atlanta January 22,
2008
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Brownbag Overview

• Were hoping you will gain a good sense of
• what ECARMU did and learned in the SII
• some great communications tools on womens
  empowerment
• how you can use these materials to further your
  own work

• 1. Reminder about the SII and its MULTIPLE
  objectives
• (Elisa)
• 2. What did ECARMU do with that mandate?
• Research and Communications
• (Amy and Allison, and the video)
• 3. Whats it mean for Marketing and
  Communications?
• (Gretchen)

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Strategic Impact Inquiry as a Core Business
Function
Goal Deepen a culture of learning and critical
inquiry through
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The SII on Womens Empowerment The basics

• Key Principles
• Seek rigor, not anecdotes
• Embed external perspective in all steps Ask
  them to challenge us at all times
• Approach as a multi-year, CARE International
  learning process
• Research for change questions must matter to
  ongoing programs, and result in actionable
  recommendations for increased impact
• Apply Programming Principles to research process
  itself What would an RBA to impact research look
  like?

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(No Transcript)
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Defining Womens Empowerment
We understand empowerment as the sum total of
changes needed for a woman to realize her full
human rights the interplay of changes in in
her own aspirations and capabilities (agency),
in the environment that surrounds and
conditions her choices (structure), in the
power relations through which she must negotiate
her path (relations). Any individual indicator
of progress can only be properly assessed and
valued in the context of how it advances that
whole.
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Now hold that thought its going to get
complicated

ARMU Regional Program Quality Gender equity
FocUS (Breakthrough on gender equity) Gender
Mapping/ Synthesis (region-wide) Reflective
Practice Review India/CASHE In-depth field
research Bangladesh
Global Methods C-Pin, Promising Practices
reflective/desk review
Women, Power, Sex and HIV
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Diverse minds experiences
Creating new dialogues
Learning Together
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The ECARMU research

• Six sitesBurundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia,
  Tanzania, Uganda
• Three broad methodologies desk-review,
  participatory impact dialogues, in-depth
  research.
• Struggle of meaning diverse notions of
  empowerment from site to site, challenge our own
  views.
• Findings Greatest evidence of impact on aspects
  of agency interesting (but less common) changes
  in relations and structures

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The value of Contextualization at work ECARMU
Indicators
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ECARMU SII Communication Strategy

• Purpose
• To facilitate the sharing of experiences across
  country offices and to learn what have been the
  most effective and least effective approaches
  when it comes to the empowerment of women and
  the advancement of gender equity within our own
  country offices and in the communities we work
  in.
• There is also great value in sharing with both
  internal and external audiences what has NOT
  worked and why. This type of evidence can be used
  to ask for more targeted funding, to advocate for
  better spending of resources and to increase
  institutional credibility because CARE is in fact
  willing and able to look at its own operations
  and at its own impact.
• Target Audiences
• CARE staff in the region and globally
• Partner organizations with whom CARE works at
  national / international levels
• Donors
• The media and segments of the general public

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SII and CAREs Communications

• A hopeful, exciting new era of collaboration and
  sharing between program and communications.
• Findings have shaped organizational strategy we
  are generating new communications about the
  strategy itself and about our work more
  generally, all informed by the SII learnings.
• Digging deep means uncovering some unexpected,
  and sometimes unpleasant, things. We need
  stronger systems to communicate the right
  findings to the right people (internal learning
  vs. external teaching/sharing vs. external
  marketing).
• ECAR experience is one to grow on and learn from.
  A great example of thinking about communications
  as a crucial component of the learning process.