trainig for trainers for roma activists

8/11/2019 Trainig for Trainers for Roma Activists

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CENTAR NA ROMITE NA GRAD SKOPJECENTAR E ROMENGORO TARI I DIZ SKOPJE

ROMA CENTER OF SKOPJE

Ul. August Cesarec br. 3/4/2, 1 000 SkopjeR.Makedonija

Tel. ++ 389 02 / 638 800, 618 575, Faks: 618 575

e-mail:centar@ mt.net.mk

13 November12,

2000

Dear Friends,

Please find enclosed the report of the Training for Trainers for Roma Womenactivists, that was held in Ohrid, Hotel Belvi from 04-09.10.2000.

Also, we are enclosing you the list of participants hoping that we all will stay in

contact and cooperate in the future.

With more information about the results of the selection process, well get back to

you very soon.

Best Regards,

Azbija Memedova,Coordinator of Roma Center of Skopje

REPORT OF THE TRAINIG FOR TRAINERSROMA WOMEN ACTIVISTS


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OHRID, MACEDONIA, 04-09.10.2000

Goal: Empowering current and future Romany activists.

Desired outcomes:

Improved skills and effectiveness of Romany Women activists in

strategy development, advocasy and lobbing, leadership and

international fundraising strategies;

Powerful Roma women leadership on national and international level;

Participants:25 Roma Women activities form the following countries: Macedonia,

Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Croatia, BIH, Slovak Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Agenda:

Day 1: Social origin of gender

Self respect

Culture and gender

Day 2: Leadership

Advocasy and lobbing

Round table discussion with local leaders

Day 3: Women and human rightsInternational mechanisms

Day 4: strategic and project planning

Writing project proposals

Day 5: Project developing

Conclusions/Evaluation

Methodology:

Sharing experience and knowledge through interactive and dynamic process

of learning (games, examples, handouts)

Day 1

- trainer: Nicoleta Bitu

1. The introduction and presentation of the participants


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In the first session of the training there were two main objectives to be followed during it: the

presentation of the program and why we are these as well as to start to know the participants.

The session started with the presentation of the program. The program consisted in two parts

one the training and another one the grant competition, after the training. It was presented also

the team of organizers and how the idea of having the training arrived.

a. Presentation of the programThe training it is part of co-operation action among Network Women Program of

OSI, New York, Roma Participation Program, OSI Budapest, Soros National

Foundation, Macedonia and the Roma Center from Skopje, Macedonia.

Organizing this training in partnership it was a learning process for the

members of their organizing team from the point of view of funds, matching

funds as well as the good cooperation between Roma and non-Roma. This

aspect of good cooperation gives the Unitika of the process also.

Another aspect whish gives to this process a specificity is the transfer of expertisefrom Roma to Roma women activists, in sense that the trainers team was completely

formed from Roma women with expertise in different field, and the good quality

work of these presentations during the preparation meeting of the trainers form

Budapest, September 15.

The idea of having a training of trainers for Romany women appeared from the needs

identified during the fields visits of some of the members of the organizing team. The

analyses were that there are Romany women organizations but they do not have a

very clear gender approach, acting more as au usual Roma organization, in the field

of children education, humanitarian aid or only health projects addressed to women.

The training wanted to give to the participants the basic knowledge of the genderissues, as well as international instruments and mechanisms and the project

management, the key issues of the activities to be carried on effectively.

b. Presentation of the participantsThe participants introduced themselves and made a short presentation of their

associations work. Also, they said how they found out about the training and

what they are waiting from it.

This session helped the participants to have the first contact and the basic information

about the others. Some of the participants knew each other from past regional

conferences on Roma women issues.

During the presentation appeared clear the fact that we were having two differentgroups in terms of knowledge and experience: one of the beginners who had at least 2

years of activity but not implicated in the regional initiatives and another group with

at least 4 years of activity and some experience in the regional level but not in

advocating the international organizations.

- trainer: Vera Kurtic

2.Social Origin of Gender

This session was aimed to introduce meaning and social construction of gender to the

participants. Methods that were used: discussion in a large group, individual work within

small groups. The introductory part was made out of several steps:


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The first step was the introduction of the subject by asking the group what happens when a

baby is born? What do people say and do? What questions do they ask? From the moment of

birth even before the naming the baby is identified and thus defined by its. Sex. Stating that

we are going to study further about this that day.

The second step was asking the participants to place all their things on the floor, close their

eyes, take a few deep breaths and go back in time when they first noticed that they were

different as girsl. How old are they? What is happening around them? Who is around them?

What is the message of difference? Who is giving the message? Remain silent for a few

minutes go give the participants time to reexperience this moment and observe.

The next step was that they draw their experience on a piece of paper and think about the

questions about the message, source and feelings relating to the experience. After this group

of 5-6 women were formed where they could share their experiences and consequently return

to the large group where discussion was held.

All these activities were an introduction to making the distinction between gender (socially

conditioned) and sex (biologically conditioned).

When we reached to the definition of gender, participants had a chance to get information on

the key components of gender relation analysis.

Knowing that for the most of the participants this was the fist time to get information aboutthese issues it was necessary further to elaborate the basic issues of the discrimination against

women. Components discussed here were: gender roles, gender division of labor, access,

power relations and gender needs. All of these components were followed by the statistical

data related to the each individual component with the given information that the statistics

were done by women.

This session was very important and good introductory part of a womens training because

women recognized their own personal risk of being of female gender and then with the help

of the statistical analyses, recognized social pressure towards each individual woman.


3.Respect and self-respect and its importance in gender

The session on the respect and self-respect had concentrated on the discovering of the

situations in a which the participants felt respected and disrespected and the feelings attached

to these situations.

The session begun with a role-play in which 5 volunteers played an imaginary meeting of

Roma issues and we had 3 men and 2 women, the trainees identified with humor who were

the men and who were the woman. Started with this situation they shared in 5 small groups in

which they discussed the specific situations in which they felt resected and disrespected and

why they think that it was like that.

The session helped them to know each other more deeply, being in the first day of the

training, as well as to discover the variety of the roles, which a woman can play in her life.The outcome was the importance of self-respect and respect for a Roma woman activist in

order to fulfill her activity with success and in order to get support from other actors involved

in their activities.

- trainer: Agnes Doroci

4.Culture and gender

What is the Roma Culture and what are the elements of that culture was the main

question of this session.

From the very interesting discussion couple of other questions came out: whats happening

with the language? Why weve forgotten the Roma language? Is there an impact?

Assimilation or integration?


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Among the other comments, one of the conclusions that the integration of Romas s wrong

when they are loosing their language.

Another underlined point of the discussion was the role of the national governments in the

process of integration of Roma and their strategies.

Day 2

- trainer: Angela Kotse

1. Leadership and advocacy

9,00 Introduction. (what is your challenge to be a leader? What is yourstrengthen as a leader)?

Discussion

Definition of Facilitative Leader: Facilitative leader empower people to

work together to achieve a common goal They make it easier for people:

Contribute their ideas and expertise

Speak up when they have a problems

Take initiative

Work with others

Make decisions

Share responsibilities for success

What is the advantage and disadvantage of Roma Women leader?

Presentation on plenary

Small group discussion

and report on the plenary

Profile of facilitative Leader

Collaborative (*Creates opportunities for people*Shares the power of decision making

*Promotes the value

Strategic Receptive & Flexible

*Reminds other of the ,,big pictures,, *Actively encourages others*Keeps attention focused on high leverage *Accepts others idea

issues and activities *Adjusts plans to meet

*Provides perspective at critical moments changing needs


Small group discussion

and report on the plenary

(What is your biggest challenge in your work to

respond for the requirement of facilitative leader?)

Dimensions od Success:

-

Results (Completion of the task, achievement of the goal)- Process (how the work gets done, how the work is designed

and managed, how the work is monitored and evaluated)

- Relationship (how people experience each other, how peoplerelate to the organization, how people feel their involvement and

contribution)

Exercise: Small-group workEach group have to build up a tower from some materials.

They have to choose a leader and they have to keep attention

on (Results, Process, Relationship)

The task was written on the chard

Feed back on the small group work

LUNCH BREAK


Small group work


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What is advocacy: Advocacy is a political process designed

to influence policy decisions at local, regional, national and

international levels.

Important aspects of advocacy:

- Advocacy is citizen initiated;

-

Advocacy is aimed at changing the interest/needs/desires/of citizens into definable policies, practices or rights

- Advocacy is composed of actions designed to draw a

communitys attention to an issue and to direct policy-

makers to a solution

- Advocacy uses political and legal strategies to achieve isgoals

Discussion trough a specific Roma advocacy work which was

in Slovakia. Now they influenced a different political level

KEY QUESTIONSFOR DEVELOPING AN

ADVOCACY STRATEGY

Looking outward

1. Objectives: What do you want?

2. Audiences: Who can give it to you:

3. Message: What do you need to hear?

4. Messengers: Who do they need to hear it from?

5. Delivery: How can get them to hear it?

Looking inward:

6. Resources: What have we got?

7. Gaps: What do we need to develop?

8. First efforts: How do we begin?9. Evaluation: How do we tell if its working?

Small group develop an advocacy strategy.


Small group work

- moderator: Agnes Doroci

2. Round table discussion with Mr. Martin Demirovski (local representative of ERRC)

and Mr. Asmet Elezovski (DROM-Kumanovo)

The idea of the round table was to confront the men leaders with the Women activists to

open a discussion about the men and female role in the society in general, in the Roma NGO

movement and within the family as well.

Mr. Demirovski was defending his general opinion that Roma Women are firstly Roma

and that there is not space or need for Roma Women associations or organizations.

Opposite of this opinion, Mr. Elezovski sad that Roma Women have to organize them self in

order have structures.

After 2 hours, the participants and the guests wanted to continue the discussion during the

dinner.

Day 3


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- trainer: Vera Kurtic

1. Women and Human Rights

In this session the accent was put on human rights and womens human rights.

The participants have shown an excellent knowledge about the womens human rights and

have clearly distinguished the issues and facts between human rights and womens human

rights.

The first part of the session we talked and enumerated the different womens human rights

such as: womens human rights on health protection, work, rest, reproductive and sexual,

sexual orientation etc.


2. INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENT AND MECHANISMS RELATED TO ROMAAND WOMEN RIGHTS

This session was dedicated for a brief introduction in the field of international instruments

and mechanisms. Because this subject is a very large one, thats why the focus was on Roma

and women specific instruments and mechanisms.

The method used was the lecture with inter-active questions. The lecture gave also

information on the potential ways to advocate for the Roma and women rights on the

international level..

There were interesting questions on the need of this work, on the results of the advocacy

campaigns in the last years of promoting the Roma rights. There were discussions on theconcrete results of this international aspect of the Roma rights, in concrete documents, action

and funds

programs.

It was explained too the relation between the grass root activity and the international level.

The need to bring the grass root examples into the international campaigns in order to

exemplify the pattern of violations of rights

The international instruments and mechanisms it was presented in the close relation with the

session on advocacy and with the identification of the associations environment in which part

of, are the international organizations.

Day 4

- trainer: Azbija Memedova

1. Strategic and project planing

All the participants had a task to came to the training in Ohrid with a draft project proposals,

based on the needs of their communities and target group.

All the flip charts were hanged on walls and pretending that we were on a market place

woman had a chance to see similar and different problems that Roma women are confronting

in different countries, proposed strategies for solving the problem and of course, different

ways of project presentations.


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Next step was to find out how did they identify the needs for the concrete proposal that they

are presenting?!

After a short lecture and discussion in large group, they understand that the identification of

the needs is the first step in strategy planning.

More that one session we were trying together to understand what is mission and vision?

Is small group they had a task to develop project proposals following the presented steps in

writing proposals:

1. who

2. why

3. what

4. how

5. when

6. where

7. how much

The expected result of this session that was accomplished was to give to the participants all

the basic skills for strategy in order to improve them selfs and the work that they are doing in

their respective countries and local communities.

Methods that were used: large group discussions (questions & answers), work in small

groups, presentations.

Day 5

The first part of the day, individually or in national teems, women were finishing the projects,

trying to make sinters of all information and new knowledge that was given to them.

Concerning the different level of experience of all the participants, they menaged to develop

very good proposals, based on real identification of the needs. Positive result is also the tact

that more experienced women were helping the beginners (for example , Kosovo

participants ).

Second part of the day was dedicated for evaluation of the training, beside the every day

daily evaluation.

Methods that were used: large group discussions (questions &answers), work in small

groups, presentations.

- trainer: VeraKurtic

2. Evaluation

Session on the evaluation followed the session Writing project proposals where the

participants should have been presented with the introduction in the process of the estimation

of success.


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First step was to see how much they already know about evaluation and this was done

through my asking questions: What is the evaluation? Why it is done? What is the purpose of

the evaluation? How it is done? What can be used for doing it? Etc.

There was the opportunity where some women presented their individual experiences with the

evaluation by presenting their projects and the means and methods they use/used for the

evaluation.

-moderator: Nicoleta Bitu

3.Closing session

The closing session it was an emotional one and plenty of visions from the participants.

All of the participants, including organizers, trainers, guests and translators.

Everybody expressed their achievements during one-week training, emotions and their views

for the future of the Roma women movement in the region. Everybody stresses the

importance of continuing the regional exchanges among Roma women activists and they

saluted the initiative of having that training.

Some of the participants expressed the will to start to empower on their local level the

political participation of Roma women by starting to reproduce that regional training on their

associations, or mainly in partnership with other Roma women activists to make it on the

national level.

There were evaluations made on the work of trainers and on the content of their presentation,

hat appeared as a conclusion of this evaluation was the importance of the construction of the

training and not last, the impact of having Roma women trainers who can act as role models

for the youngest activists.

We can call this session as A dream which came truth.

trainig for trainers for roma activists

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