ENFID AIMS TO BE A MODEL ORGANIZATION
The first Gender Training held in Essen, Germany 5-7 May 2017
Under the ENFID Gender and Leadership Programme
Amidst our rapidly changing world, ENFID aims to bring out the basic issues that humankind is struggling to deal with – respect and dignity. Under the leadership of ENFID Chair, Betsy Von Atzigen, the ENFID Gender and Leadership Program organized its first successful Gender Training which was participated by 25 representatives from ENFID Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and United Kingdom.
The training session were conducted by Rohlee de Guzman and Rosalud de la Rosa last 5-7 May 2017. It was held in a beautiful and inspiring place where the upcoming General Assembly will be held at St. Alfrid Jugendhaus, Charlottenhofstrasse in Essen Germany.
Both Rohlee and Rosalud have a longstanding career and background on gender going back from their women’s rights activism days during the First Global Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995. The two-day Training Session introduced key concepts and issues of what it means to become a gender aware individual, why it is important to be gender aware for our relationships and our society, the differences between sex and gender, where our current mindset about women and men come from, the roots of our gender socialization process starting from our childhood environment, the traditional gender stereotypes and the gender meaning for men, women, girls and boys and LGBT – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. The training also touched up violence in all forms, respect for sexual orientation and gender identity and gender equality. Finally, the trainors challenged participants to reflect within oneself what it means to be an empowered – first, as an individual human being, second, reflect with their relationships with those closest to them, and third, as a leader within their own communities.
Since this was the first Gender training organized by ENFID, it was a great opportunity to discuss and debate the future training module that should be developed by ENFID for all of its members. It was also a great opportunity to make recommendations on how can ENFID Gender and Leadershp Programme can have an impact to the organization itself. For those interested, a detailed report is also available from the Secretariat.
The participants and organizers originally designed the Training Session to include Leadership Training, however, the timing felt short because of the constraints of flight schedules among participants. We felt that there was a dire need, if even more, for other participants to learn and hear more about leadership, and that was regretful. This shows a great interest among ENFIDers to become model leaders and gender aware! On a whole, the short two day training session achieved an important milestone for ENFID for having kick-started its Gender Training. It was a good learning process for the first ever training for the Gender and Leadership Programme of ENFID.
By the end of the Training Session, the trainers introduce an innovative tool called Gender Action Learning System (GALS) which allow each one to reflect on their own personal, family household and community objectives, how it relates to their roles and relationships at those levels. and the possibility to create and achieve their visions and dreams.
Mindful that each one of the participants and organizers dedicated their precious volunteer time and resources to make this initiative happen, it was an impressive group of dedicated 24 women and 2 men. Congratulations to all participants!