GTCoP - Community of Practice Training for Gender Equality

This manual provides group education sessions for engaging men as allies in women’s economic empowerment. It emerges from CARE’s experience that women’s economic empowerment works, but that it can be made to work better and to achieve even more movement toward equality when men are deliberately engaged as allies. This manual provides detailed information on how to implement the activities. While developed in the specific context of Rwanda, the partners believe the activities and the approach are relevant for other settings and other women’s economic empowerment initiatives.

This package is designed for use by individuals, organizations and donors interested in carrying out a needs assessment to identify gaps in male engagement programming related to HIV and AIDS prevention, care, treatment and support in order to develop relevant and effective programs and/or policies for engaging men in HIV/AIDS.

This manual includes a variety of interactive educational activities for a Men as Partners (MAP) master trainer to use in his or her work. Some of the activities are intended for use in internal staff training, and others are intended for use by the MAP life skills educators.

 This manual is intended to be a resource for those working with men and boys on issues of citizenship, human rights, gender, health, sexuality and violence. The content of the activities is informed by a commitment to social justice, gender equality and engaged citizen activism. The activities are intended to encourage men to reflect on their own experiences, attitudes and values regarding women, gender, domestic and sexual violence, HIV, AIDS, democracy and human rights, so that they can take action to help prevent domestic and sexual violence, reduce the spread HIV and the impact of AIDS, and promote gender equality. The activities are generally simple to use and don’t require lots of prior facilitation experience.

Mobilising Men in Practice brings together tools, stories and lessons from Mobilising Men partners in India, Kenya and Uganda. It is intended to inspire and guide others who are committed to engaging more men in efforts to address sexual and gender-based violence within the institutions in which we live our lives.

This module builds explores how to apply diversity competencies in engaging men and boys in gender equality programming. The goals of this module are: 

• To reflect upon and internalize how gender and power affects their own human development and relationships 
• To understand “hegemonic masculinity” and how it determines social norms related to the socialization of boys, concepts, and practice of power, violence, sexuality (including homophobia) 
• To identify personal actions that they can take to promote gender equality in their lives 
• To strengthen own practical skills design and implementation for programs engaging men and boys for gender equality
  

YMI seeks to promote a lifestyle that prioritizes good health, nonviolence, and gender equality through a combination of educational workshops and community campaigns. This synthesis report provides an overview of the program’s rationale, design, and evaluation results from YMI’s implementation in vocational high schools.

This document highlights each element of CARE’s engaging men and boys for gender equality work and lessons learnt across each element: 

• Conscientization 
  
• Intimate Dialogues
  
• Building the Base
  
• Stepping Out, Stepping Up  
• Alliances for Advocacy 
• Synchronization

This study brings out key risk factors in relation to violence against women, childhood trauma and men’s own experience of violence. The study also highlights key findings, which have implications for organizations working in child protection, sexual and reproductive health, men’s health and in youth programming. This study also highlights the need for more focused and scaled up approaches to engage men in the discourse of violence against women, as well as the need to transform women’s own attitudes about violence in diverse forms. CARE is committed to working in partnership with women, communities, civil society, governments, donors and the private sector to implement these recommendations.

The purpose of this manual is to help community workers to conduct a training programme with boys and young men to reduce gender-based violence. The manual is organized in the form of a three-day training programme. Each day focuses on one or more specific themes. These themes are linked to one another so as to make a logical sequence. Each theme is explored through one or more activities. The section entitled 'The Three-day Training Programme' provides a detailed explanation regarding the importance of these themes and the reasons for exploring them in a particular sequence.