Gaining Ground—Case Stories of Gender and Development in the Co-op--Part 1

Message from the Asian Women in Co-operative Development Forum (AWCF): This is Part 1 of the video “Gaining Ground—Case Stories of Gender and Development in the Co-op.” This video is an overview of AWCF’s journey when it implemented two projects funded by MISEREOR of Germany: “Strengthening Gender Programs of Co-op Organizations in Asia” (1996-1999, extended to 2000); and “Enabling Women to Promote and Practice Transformative Leadership in Co-ops in Five Countries in Asia” (2002-2005). Five national-level AWCF member-organizations in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines participated in the two projects. Each organization gained learning on various areas of expertise and practices of mainstreaming gender and transformative leadership (TL) in programs and services, and building women’s empowerment in the organizations within the AWCF network, including increasing the role and participation of women at all levels and all sectors of co-ops; entrepreneurship development; training of co-op leaders on gender and TL; and policy advocacy, among other engendering actions.

In 2004, AWCF held a network strategizing workshop in Malaysia. The workshop surmised that the strengths, opportunities, and challenges that AWCF continues to gain and to face as a regional resource center and advocacy body on gender and co-ops are helping the network to further grow and develop. But, very importantly, the workshop also acknowledged that AWCF’s learning and gains, particularly from its recent major project undertakings like the MISEREOR projects, are helping it to continue gender mainstreaming efforts in the members, as a network reinforced by individual organizational strengths. Overall, the strategies and learning from the MISEREOR projects that help AWCF promote, integrate, and strengthen gender work in co-ops are: capacity-building programs for member-organizations; gender equality and women empowerment campaign; publication of resource materials; networking and linkaging; development of monitoring tools; similar activities in all member-countries of AWCF that brought various results and impact, which were necessary and important for sharing experiences and widening learning and insights of each member-organization; fund allocation for gender and development (GAD) and TL; creation of a structure within the organization to look into gender integration within; and a gender equality and women empowerment framework from women in development (WID) to women and development (WAD) to GAD to TL.

Challenges that the AWCF network faced, and may still continue to do so, in implementing the MISEREOR projects are also included in this video for added understanding on the experiences of the AWCF network regarding the two projects, and the outputs of these experiences.

The full-length stories in this video are in the book published by AWCF: “Gaining Ground—Case Stories of Gender and Development in the Co-op.” Inquiries on the book can be emailed to awcf@coopwomen.org