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Training SCA staff in gender awareness

Malin Lager, August 9, 2005

The objective of the gender workshops is to strengthen the awareness on gender issues for all the school consultants that are working for Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA). The courses also provide the participants with basic tools for analysing the situation, to propose improvement and implement changes. The gender training will be carried out during 2005 through workshops led by trainers from SCAs gender unit; Ms Fatima, Mr Nawabi and Ms Lillesaar

Both male and female staff working together at the gender training

The workshops will be carried out in different steps;

• Gender awareness – understanding of the gender concept, male/female rights in Islam and in the Constitution, imbalances between males and females etc.
• Gender development – this course will be a follow up on the previous on, but this course the trainers will add some practical tasks for the participants and work with gender development and how to involve males and females.
• Gender analysis – this last course the participants will know how to analyse conditions and situations and the school consultants will be able to pass on their knowledge about gender awareness and perform training with teachers and headmasters out in the regions.

One of the participants I talk to at the gender training workshop in Pul-i-Khumri is Education Chief Officer Mr Abdullah Yakoobi. This is his third gender course training and he is participation in the third face - gender analysis.

When I ask him what he thinks about the course he starts to explain to me with great enthusiasm: - These three courses have been so useful and interesting and we learned a lot. Before I joined this course I thought gender was only for women. Now I know that gender so much more, it is also about the family, equal rights, women’s status in gender, performing a job, economic equality. Mr Yakoobi continues to talk about that he thinks this is an important knowledge for all the SCA school consultants to possess and for them to pass on their knowledge to other teachers.

He finishes up by saying: - “Islam says, seeking of the knowledge is the duty of every men and women. That’s what we been doing during these days. If we any of us had any opinions or disagreements about the course, we just sat down and discussed this matter, both female and men and solve the problem together", he explains before he leaves to go back to the workshop.

Mariam is another of the participants at the gender course and she is a young woman that just started her job as a teacher trainer in Eastern Regional Office in Pul-i-Khumri. Mariam tells me about how useful this course is especially for the teachers that she is now herself training in gender awareness. She explains for me how happy one of the male teacher from Burka Villgae from Nahrain Province was after she had informed him about gender. –He did not know what gender was, but after I taught him he was so happy. He wanted his wife and daughters to be informed about gender too. Mariam also explain how this teachers reaction towards her teaching about gender made her feel accepted, happy and proud. But still there is al long way to go and Mariam sounds very hopeful and ready for her task in spreading the awareness about gender.

Ms Mariam and Mr Yakoobi at SCA gender course in Pul-i-Khumri