Feminist Advocacy for Gender Justice Course in Tanzania

In October 2022, ENGAGE had its first all partner international course on Feminist Advocacy for Gender Justice. The course, facilitated by Julien Landry and Sarika Sinha (Coady Institute) and Jacqueline Mgumia Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) was held to strengthen women’s organizations and advocates in the theoretical and practical foundations of feminist advocacy and gender justice work.

Using a decolonization lens, the program enhanced knowledge and skills through the active sharing of experiences and ideas and explored opportunities for ongoing learning and collective action around issues of common concern. The workshop built on experiences and literature in the areas of advocacy, feminist theory, communication, human rights, popular education, and social change. Participants worked in teams with their colleagues to apply a strategic advocacy planning framework – through a feminist lens – to their own work.

Based on the course, each team prepared advocacy plans with stakeholder analysis, strategies, advocacy tactics, implementation plans, and monitoring and evaluation ideas to understand the impact of their advocacy. During the weeklong discussions, participants discussed shared challenges such as child marriage, unequal farm and household burdens on women, domestic violence, and unequal pay. They also raised solutions based in feminist and assetbased approaches that can address these challenges.

A special thanks to Rose Ngunangwa, a journalist and an Executive Director for TAMCODE, who joined the workshop and helped document and share it with the Tanzanian media. She also wrote an news article for the Daily News available here: https://dailynews.co.tz/of-gender-justice-training-and-delegates-falling-in-love-with/

Congratulations to our 21 graduates from Care Zimbabwe, CCDB (Bangladesh), CLE (Haiti), WISE (Ethiopia), Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (Kenya), Institute for Sustainable Development (Ethiopia), Binti Makini Foundation (Tanzania), The Glaring Future Foundation (Tanzania), Seed Savers Network (Kenya), TGNP (Tanzania), and Women Empowerment Action (Ethiopia).