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Report on the Leadership Training for Roma Women Activities
OHRID, MACEDONIA October 4-8, 2000
Goal:
The Leadership Training’s goal was to support strategic priorities for Roma women activists on grass-root levels in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia by empowering through the practical skills on international and national advocacy, lobbying, grant-writing, and fund-rising approaches.
Participants: 25 Roma Women activists (Please see the attached a list of participants).
Workshop’s Agenda:
Day 1 October 4, 2000 (details bellow):
Social origin of gender
Self respect
Culture and gender
Day 2 October 5, 2000 (details bellow):
Leadership
Advocacy and lobbying on international and national levels
Round table discussion with local leaders
Day 3, October 6, 2000 (details bellow):
Women and human rights
International mechanisms on Women’s Human Rights
"Situation in Kosovo" - a special session
Day 4, October 7, 2000 (details bellow):
Strategic approaches in a project planning
Practical skills on writing project proposals
Day 5, October 8, 2000 (details bellow):
Project developing, evaluation and fund-rising strategies
Conclusions/Evaluation
Methodology:
The training’s methodology was designed to give opportunities to the participants in sharing their experience and knowledge through interactive and dynamic process of learning in small group discussions, handouts, role-play sessions, and exercises’ presentations.
Trainers:
Representing a significant development in the Romani women’s movement, the Leadership training was organized, developed, and taught by Romani women for Romani women activists and NWP consultants, Nicoleta Bitu (Romania) and Azbija Memedova (Macedonia) led a team of trainers that also included Angela Kocze (Hungary), Vera Kurtic (Serbia), and Agnes Doroczi (Hungary).
The trainers have a great expertise in different fields, including gender issues, culture, advocacy and lobbying, capacity building, and fund-rising as well as a long practical experience in these areas. The preparation meeting of the trainers was held in Budapest, September 15-17, 2000.
Day 1 October 4, 2000
1. The Introduction and Presentation of the Participants
Trainer: Nicoleta Bitu
Reporting: Nicoleta Bitu
In the first session of the training there were two main objectives: presentation of the project’s objectives; (explanation on "why we are there"); introduction of the participants. The session started with the presentation of the project’s program. The project includes two parts, which are the training and the grant competition after the training. The team of organizers presented some more information on how the idea of having the training arrived.
a. Presentation of the program
The training was a fruitful cooperation among the Network Women Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI) - New York, the Roma Participation Program of the OSI - Budapest, the Soros National Foundation in Macedonia and the Roma Centar in Skopje, Macedonia.
The idea of a mutual cooperation gives the uniqueness of this process. The design, implementation and evaluation of the training was a learning process for the members of the organizing team, considering issue of funding, as well as the cooperation between Roma and non-Roma.
The project of the Leadership Training came 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 an usual Roma organization, in the field of children education, humanitarian aid or only health projects addressed to women. This phenomena showed the necessity of increasing the political participation of the Roma women activists.
The training wanted to give to the participants the basic knowledge of the gender issues, 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 participants
The participants introduced themselves and made a short presentation of their association’s work. Also, they said how they found out about the training and what they are waiting from it.
This session helped the participants to establish a first contact and share some information about each other. Some of the participants knew each other from past regional conferences on Roma women issues.
During the presentation, it appeared clearly that there were two different groups in terms of knowledge and experience. The first group included the beginners who had at least 2 years of activity but not implicated in the regional initiatives and a second group included participants with at least 4 years of activities and some experience in the regional level, but not on advocacy on the international level.
2. Social Origin of Gender
Trainer: Vera Kurtic
Reporting: Vera Kurtic
This session had introduced a meaning and social construction of gender to the participants. Methods that Vera Kurtic used were the discussion in a large group, individual work and share of their experiences in small groups.
The introductory part was comprised of several steps. The first step was the introduction of gender by asking the group what happens when a baby is born? What do people say and do? What questions do they ask? A baby is identified and thus defined by its sex from a moment of birth even before giving a name. The second step was focusing on an exercise, which asks the participants to close eyes, take a few deep breaths and go back in a time when they first noticed that they were different as girls. How old were they? What was happening around them? Who was around them? What was the message of difference? Who was giving the message? Remain silent for a few minutes to give the participants time to re-experience this moment and observe. The next step was to give them a time so they draw their experience on a piece of paper and think about the questions of the message, sources and feelings related to the experience. Then groups of 5-6 women were formed so they could closely share their experiences and later return to the larger group where discussion was continued. When participants returned from the work in small groups Vera Kurtic asked whether some women would like to share their experiences in the large group and to see together whether their feelings of discrimination came out of the fact that their sex as a female or because of their gender. These activities served as an introduction in making the distinction between gender (socially constructed) and sex (biologically conditioned) definitions.
When the participants reached a definition of gender Vera Kurtic focused them on information of the key components of gender relation analysis. Keeping in mind that for the most of the participants this was the first time to obtain information about gender issues Vera Kurtic further elaborated on the basic issues of the discrimination against women. Vera did not speak particularly about Roma women in this session but rather emphasized that these issues are common for any communities in the world. It helped to have a bigger picture and to realize that this is a universal issue. Main components that were discussed: gender roles, gender division of labor, access to health, education, and power relations as well as gender needs. All of these components were followed by the world statistical data related to the each individual component with the given information that the statistics were done by women.
By Vera’s opinion this session was crucially important and it was a good exercise for women since they recognized their own personal risk of being of female and then with the help of the statistical analysis recognized social pressure towards each individual woman.
3. Respect, Self-Respect and Its Importance in Gender
Trainer: Nicoleta Bitu
Reporting: Nicoleta Bitu
The session on the respect and self-respect, focused on identifying situations in which the participants felt respected and disrespected, describing the feelings that characterized these situations. The necessity of this session was essential connected.
The session started with a role-play, where 5 volunteers had a task to present a meeting on Roma issues including 3 men and 2 women. The volunteers were identified with a sense of humor who would represent men and who would represent women. Started with this situation they split into 5 small groups and discussed the specific situations in which they felt respected and disrespected and why they think that it was like that. The session helped them to as to discover the variety of the roles that a woman has in her life from a gender perspective. The outcome was to realize the importance of self-respect and respect for a Roma woman activist thus empowered her to fulfill her activities with the success and to get support from other stakeholders involved in the activities.
4. Culture and Gender
Trainer: Agnes Daroczi
Reporting: Azbija Memedova
This session was designed to understand and analyze the most important aspect of the Roma lifestyle, its culture. The main question of the session was "What is the Roma Culture and what are the key elements of the culture?" An essential issue of a socio-linguistic nature of culture came up during the discussion about a Roma language. The participants brought up the issue of language as it is very common for the Roma community to realize that a Roma language serves as an attribute for Romani culture. The interesting discussion based on this question draw consequent questions on what’s happening with the language? Why Roma people have forgotten a Roma language? Is there an impact? Does it relate to assimilation and/or integration process? Most of the participants pointed out that the integration of Roma people is going in a wrong direction if they are loosing their language and traditions.
The participants discussed their countries governments’ language policy and its strategies, and the role in the process of "integration" of Roma.
During the discussion of the integration process, Veldan Mehmet, a participant from Bulgaria, emphasized that the integration process is the two-pay process. Therefore, it is crucially important for Roma and non-Roma people to think about what peculiarities it might give in terms of similarities or differences in cultures.
Overall this session was extremely valuable for the participants and trainers, as a result of sharing their experiences and concerns.
Day 2 October 5, 2000
Leadership and Advocacy
Trainer: Angela Kocze
Reporting: Angela Kocze
a) Leadership
This was the most important session for the participants as it gave them opportunities to learn more about advocacy and leadership approaches.
In the Introduction part the participants were asked the following questions: What is your strength as a leader? What is your challenge to be a leader?
Discussion: The participants outlined that the strengths as a leader are: to represent Roma people, importance of a political participation on a regional level, promote human rights; Common challenges that all of them have are: a lack of funds, discrimintaion and segregation in their countries, political manupulation, as well as some of them do not speak Romanese language.
Angela Kozce presented a definition of a Facilitative Leade, who lead her own people to a better future, empowers people to work together, to achieve a common goal, makes it easier for people to:
contribute their ideas and expertise
speak up when they have problems/concerns
take initiative
work with others
make decisions
share responsibilities for succes.
In a small group discussion the participants were able to share with their experiences on leadership in their own organizations, as well in a national level.
Profile of a Facilitative Leader Collaboration:
Creates opportunities for people
Shares the power of decision-making
Promotes the values, mission and vision
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
What is your biggest challenge in your work to respond for the requirement of facilitative leader?
Dimensions of Success:
Results (Completion of the task, achivement 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 people relate to the organization? how people feel about their involvement and contribution?)
Exercise: Small -group work
The most powerful tool of this session was a Leadership exercise, where the participants divided into small groups had to "build" a tower with all available materials (such as a paper, tape, pens, etc). They have to choose a leader and they have to keep attention on (Results, Process, Relationship).
It was very exciting to see the different towers , which were created by the participants after 30 minutes of work. In a big group discussion each group presented their approaches applied in this exercise, including choosing a leader, defining a group who will be responsible for an individual parts of the tower.
Each group have to build up a tower from some materilas. The task was written on the chart.
b) Advocacy
Angela Kocze described a notion of advocacy, as 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 community’s attention to an issue and to direct policy-makers to a solution.
Advocacy uses political and legal strategies to achieve its goals.
Discussion followed different examples based on the participants’ countries, which were presented by the participants. The best example was given by Milka Pompova, a director of the Roma Community Center from Slovakia. Her organization has a specific Roma advocacy working with the government of Slovakia with the focus on influencing the different political levels.
This session was concluded by outlining to the participants key questions for developing an advocacy strategy.
Looking Outward:
Objectives: What do you want?
Audiences: Who can give it to you?
Message: What do they need to hear?
Messenges: Who do they need to hear it from?
Delivery: How can get them to hear it?
Looking Inward:
Resources: What have we got?
Gaps: What do we need to develop?
First efforts: How do we begin?
Evaluation: How do we tell if it’s working?
Round table discussion with Mr. Martin Demirovski (local representative of ERRC) and Mr. Asmet Elezovski (DROM-Kumanovo)
Moderator: Agnes Daroczi
Reporting: Azbija Memedova
The idea of the round-table was to confront the male leaders with the women activists- to open a discussion about the male and female role in the society in general, and in the Roma NGO movement and inside a Roma family.
Mr. Demirovski was defending his general opinion that "Roma Women first of all are Roma" and that there is not need for Roma Women associations or organizations.
Opposite of this opinion, Mr. Elezovski said that Roma Women have to organize themselves in order to have more clear structure.
Day 3, October 6, 2000
1. Women and Human Rights
Trainer: Vera Kurtic
Reporting: Vera Kurtic
The first step of this session was to identify the participant’s knowledge about human rights and women’s human rights.
This session was interactive with the emphasis on women’s answers while I only asked the questions. They have shown an excellent knowledge about the women’s human rights and have clearly distinguished the issues and facts between human rights and women’s human rights.
The first part of the session we talked and enumerated the different women’s human rights such as: women’s human rights on health protection, work, rest, reproductive and sexual, sexual orientation etc.
In the second part of the session I asked them whether they know how women’s history was done and this they did not know. For that reason I shortly presented the stream of the women’s movement in XIX century onward without the exact years and names in order to avoid confusion and too much information. This was the introduction for the next session that should deal with the history of Roma women movement and the point was to make a clear distinction between the women’s movement and Roma women movement and as well as to the session International mechanism.
2. International Instruments and Mechanisms related to Roma Women Rights
Trainer: Nicoleta Bitu
Reporting: Nicoleta Bitu
This session covered a brief introduction in the field of international instruments and mechanisms on women’s human rights. Since this subject is a very broad thus the focus was on Roma and women specific instruments and mechanisms.
A method used was the lecture with interactive 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 ten years of promoting the Roma rights. There were discussions on the concrete results of this international aspect of the Roma rights, in concrete documents, actions and funds for 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 association’s environment in which part of, are the international organizations.
Day 4, October 7, 2000
1. Strategic and Project Planning
Trainer: Azbija Memedova
Reporting: Azbija Memedova
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 groups.
All the flip charts were hanged on walls and pretending that "we were on a market place", women had a chance to see similar and different problems that Roma women are confronting in different countries, proposed strategies for solving the problems and of course, different ways of project presentations.
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:
who
why
what
how
when
where
how much
The expected result of this session that was accomplished, was to give to the participants all the basic skills for strategy planning in order to improve them selves 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, October 8, 2000
The firs part of the day, individually or in national teams, women were finishing the projects, trying to make sens of all information and new knowledge that was given to them.
Concerning the different level of experience of all the participants, they managed to develop very good proposals, based on real identification of the needs. Positive result is also the fact 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.
1. Evaluation
Trainer: Vera Kurtic
Reporting: Vera Kurtic
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.
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.
Women that already had experience with projects have already been acquainted with the evaluation and have done it before and some have for the first time heard the word.
I used, as well as in all the other sessions, the flip chart so that women could get the visual information as well (definitions and drawings).
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.
2. Closing session
Moderator: Nicoleta Bitu
Reporting: Nicoleta Bitu
A closing session was an emotional and one of plenty of "visions" from the participants. All of the participants, including organizers, trainers, guests and translators shared with the group their feelings about the training.
Everybody expressed their achievements during in 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 true".
