Gender Based Violence and Livelihoods – How do we do better?

[AidSource]

This post originally appeared at AidSpeak, the external blog of the AidSource admins. Check it.

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Gender Based Violence and Livelihoods – How do we do better?

Yes, we know we’ve been delinquent about blogging here. We’ll publish a roundup of your posts about how to make aid better within a few days. First, however, we’d like to announce another blog link-up. This time on the topic of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in the context of livelihoods.

We’re especially pleased to host this blogosphere-wide meeting of the minds along with the Women’s Refugee Commission.

AidSource member Zehra Rizvi explains:

Do the economic empowerment programmes you design take into account risk that you could possibly be causing the women participating?

The Women’s Refugee Commission is raising awareness on a piece of work we’ve done on the intersection of Gender Based Violence and Livelihoods.  Do your livelihood programmes cause more harm than the intended outcome of ‘good’—i.e: empowerment and protection?

We decided to link up with AidSource to have a blogger series that featured not just our comms people and social media experts (though we LOVE them!), but a series that featured YOU.  We’ve asked some bloggers, journalists, practitioners to blog about this issue for us by taking a look at the tools we’ve produced but we would love to hear your perspective on the issue.  We asked them to look at our 2009 report: Peril or Protection: The Link between Livelihoods and Gender-based Violence in Displacement Settings which was followed by the guidance manual Preventing Gender-based Violence, Building Livelihoods, and an e-learning course providing in-depth instruction on how to make work safe.

We also had an hour long interactive webinar on the 25^th of July 2012 on the issue with Dale Buscher of the WRC and Mendy Marsh of UNICEF which over 350 signed up for from all over the world:

Take a look. Take a listen… and then tell us.

What do YOU think? 

Anyone can be a part of this blogger series. In addition to being linked both here on AidSpeak and inside AidSource,  WRC will also link to the posts on their website.

Here’s how it all works:

1)       Write an original post on your blog about any aspect on the intersection of GBV and livelihoods. Some potential ways to think about the issue are listed below. Publish your post.

[Extra credit: publish first on your AidSource profile blog (you're a member ofAidSource, right?). Extra-extra credit: publish only on your AidSource blog!  Extra extra extra credit:  talk about the WRC materials! ]

2) Click the goofy lizard icon at the bottom of this post, follow a few prompts, and add the link to your post to the collection. Takes two minutes, max.

 3) Read posts by others, comment, debate, get your AidSource member friends to write posts, tweet famous aid pundits to persuade them to post, etc. (Inside AidSource, you can get things rolling in the Livelihoods group or by adding a blog post.)

4) This collection closes on Oct 15^th which is when our campaign ends on raising awareness on the issue.  We will be having a photo contest as well so be sure to keep checking the WRC campaign page .

We welcome ALL perspectives on how to make #SafeLivelihoods for women.  Some potential questions to think about…

- Would you change or add anything to the WRC safety mapping tool?  (We really want to know…we love feedback and the tools are meant for YOU to use!)

- Have you used livelihoods as a tool for protection?  How has it worked out?

- Have you seen livelihood programmes cause more harm than good and how would you do it differently now?
The WRC recommends that men be involved in GBV and livelihood programming as part of minimizing risk to women—what do you think the best way is to do this?

- A key gap noted in the WRC research was on M&E for protection outcomes for women in livelihoods programming.  Do you have good practice to share or how would you go about ensuring this happens?

- What organizational capacity needs to be in place?  WRC recommends multi year funding, the hiring of GBV specialists and the mentoring of local partners—what else do you think we need?

Anything else that comes into mind once you look at the research, guidance, webinar and course?

You can email Zehra ([e-mail], or inside AidSource using the built-in email function), Senior Programme Officer for Livelihoods at the Women’s Refugee Commission for more details.

Happy blogging!