Women's Protection And Empowerment

Esther Karnley and Marian Rogers have dedicated their lives to activism for women's rights, protection, empowerment, and the prevention of violence. They both got their start in Liberia, but have held a myriad of positions in their combined 43 years of experience in this field. Listen to them talk about the beginnings of this movement in the humanitarian space, their lessons, their advice, and their hopes for the future. A special thank you to Megan O'Brien for production support on this episode.

In this episode, we talk about a report issued by International Rescue Committee that looks at the humanitarian response to COVID-19 and its effect on women and girls. We're joined by three contributors to the report, Caroline Mwanki, Ilaria Michelis, and Nancy Abwola who discuss how the pandemic has affected the safety women and girls in emergencies in their day to day lives and the need for increased accountability. To read the full report, visit https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/5281/ircwpecovidreportv6.pdf

This is the fourth in our series called Staff Spotlight. In this episode, we're highlighting the work of Tizita Tekletsadik, Child Protection and GBV Survivor Specialist in International Rescue Committee's Violence Prevention and Response unit. In her career, she's been a lawyer, and author, a project manager, among other titles. Listen to hear about her career trajectory, what challenges she see for emerging activists and her aspirations for this sector.

This episode we talk Climate Change - the current state of things, the impact on humanitarian contexts and on women and girls, and climate action we can take. Tara Clerkin, Senior Agriculture Coordination in Climate and Partnerships, and Charlotte Collins, a climate change researcher and intern at IRC, tell us all about the right vocabulary and the role of women and girls as change agents.

Communication should be purposeful in its delivery of information that brings awareness to a topic, betters our understanding, and incites action. But communicating about violence against women and girls comes with unique challenges. How we are communicating about new trends in this field, projects we’re piloting, and the impacts of our programs? And how do we do that in the right way that gets the right attention? Nicole Smith, Senior Global Communications Officer at IRC, joins us for this episode to help us think like a comms person. *If you're at IRC, and want to reach out to Nicole with comms ideas, connect with her at nicole [dot] smith at rescue [dot] org.

With COVID-19 travel and working restrictions, many IRC country programs are shifting to digital modalities for remote staff training. In this episode, Kristy Crabtree shifts roles from host to interviewee in order to provide practical guidance on how to adapt training from in-person to remote settings. Learn how to identify and overcome barriers, engage participants, design a training that makes the most of available technology, and implement remote trainings in low resource settings or where there are mobility constraints.

In this episode, we're dedicating space to talk about the realities for women and girls and GBV programs when it comes to Covid-19. Everywhere where IRC operates from Lesvos, Greece, to Al Hol, Syria, to Turkana, Kenya, to Mae Sot, Thailand, to NY, USA has been affected. We a global round table, we talked about risks to women and adolescent girls, how are program are adapting, what resources are available, and how this is changing norms. Here are the resources referenced in this episode: - Women and Girls Safe Spaces: Technical Guidance Note for COVID-19 -IRC, IMC, NCA: https://gbvaor.net/sites/default/files/2020-04/WGSS%20Technical%20Guidance%20Note%20.pdf - GBVIMS, Case Management and COVID-19: http://www.gbvims.com/covid-19/

We are reposting this episode from 2018 at at time that could not be more relevant. With the covid-driven programmatic adaptations happening everywhere and many shifting towards the use of digital technology because of social distancing and mobility constraints, it's more important than ever that we are acknowledging the massive digital gender gap, not making assumptions about access, and planning for remote adaptations that are inclusive and not harmful to women and girls in humanitarian settings In 2017, we conducted a research project in Lebanon to answer several key questions: what are women and girls’ access to mobile phones and the Internet, what are the barriers to their access (real and perceived), and what are their desired uses and safety concerns? In working with potentially vulnerable populations such as forcibly displaced women and girls, is mobile technology the appropriate channel for communication, service provision, information dissemination, awareness raising, and empowerment activities? In

What we measure and the way we measure it has significant impacts on our programming. In this episode, Kelsey Simmons and Michelle Wong, both M&E specialists at IRC, walk us through the meaning of a feminist approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning. They discuss how does that work practically in humanitarian settings and through the project cycle. Resources referenced in the podcast (and a few extras): - We All Count https://weallcount.com/ - Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment https://crea.education.illinois.edu/ - Data Feminism https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism - American Evaluation Association Feminist Issues in Evaluation https://comm.eval.org/feministissuesinevaluation/home - Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men - Feminist Evaluation and Research: Theory and Practice. Edited by Sharon Brisolara, Denise Seigart, and Saumitra SenGupta. New York: The Guilford Press, 2014. - Feminist Evaluation: Explorations and Experiences. Edited by Sharon Brisol

Programs evolve over time, especially in our work with specific populations. In this episode, we walk through that process with Farah Salhab, the manager of the adolescent girl's program in Lebanon, to see how their program evolved from a stand-alone initiative to a core part of IRC's Women's Protection and Empowerment programming model, and all with girls' voices driving the process.

Our response in humanitarian settings, the services we provide and the access or barriers to them affect people differently. Part of the reason for this are our interconnected social categorizations (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability). These overlapping identities contribute to systems of oppression, discrimination or disadvantage. So, how can we adopt and incorporate an intersectional view to our work? In this episode we'll talk about this from a practical and academic perspective, what this means, what it looks like, approaches and also misuses. *Links referenced in the episode: Intersectionality Matters Podcast: https://aapf.org/podcast SASA Together: http://raisingvoices.org/sasatogether/ Kiffe Ta Race: https://www.binge.audio/category/kiffetarace/ GADN Thinkpiece: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/536c4ee8e4b0b60bc6ca7c74/t/5a130e9d53450a0abd9c0f8f/1511198367912/Intersectionality+GADN+thinkpiece+November+2017.pdf Intersectionality Zine: http://preventgbvafrica.org/wp-content/upl

Since its magnitude first came to light in 2002, the aid community’s focus on addressing sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) has primarily rested on establishing reporting mechanisms and only recently shifted toward proactive measures to mitigate risk and prevent such abuses from occurring. In this episode, Alina Potts of the Global Women's Institute, Harriet Kolli of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) Uganda, and Loujine Fattal of CARE Lebanon, discuss Empowered Aid: Transforming gender and power dynamics in the delivery of humanitarian aid. Empowered Aid is feminist, participatory action research that recognizes women and girls as contextual safeguarding experts and engages them as co-producers of knowledge, supported to safely take an active role in asking and answering questions about their own lives. It first examines the mechanisms through which material aid (i.e. food and non-food items) is delivered, and how these processes might inadvertently increase risks of SEA. The second phase builds upo

This is the first in a new series on the podcast called Unrelated Book Reviews where we discuss books that are seemingly unrelated to our field, but actually have a lot of potential for application. Stick with us. There is a lot outside this field that can have really practical benefits when applied to this work. For the first one in this series, we read Julia Cameron’s bestseller, The Artist’s Way, a book about creativity. We’ll give you a summary of the key elements of the book, how it might apply to the work you’re doing, and recommendations to take it forward. If there’s a book you think we should cover in this series on Unrelated Book Reviews – send me a message at kristy.crabtree@rescue.org https://juliacameronlive.com/books-by-julia/the-artists-way-a-spiritual-path-to-higher-creativity/

How can we create safe spaces for women and girls in humanitarian settings? In this episode, we talked with Melanie Megevand of International Rescue Committee about the Global Women and Girls Safe Space Toolkit, which offers a blueprint to support the transformational shift in use of power GBV practitioners seek to achieve in partnership with women, adolescent girls and local women’s organizations in humanitarian settings. With support from the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the International Rescue Committee and International Medical Corps combined expertise, decades of experience and support from staff, women and girls and community members across seventeen women and girls' safe spaces in current humanitarian settings to ground the approach.

This is the third in our series called Staff Spotlight. In this episode, we're highlighting the work of Betelhem, Community Wellbeing Initiative Coordinator in International Rescue Committee's Women's Protection and Empowerment program in Ethiopia.

Psychosocial support is a crucial part of the recovery process for women and girls, yet guidance on providing this service has been lacking. IRC is currently developing the Women Rise Psychosocial Support Toolkit for IRC, including specific curriculum, M&E tools, and supervision tools to cover this gap. This project is led by Gretchen Emick, GBV Psychosocial Support Specialist for the IRC. The Women Rise Toolkit also sets forth a framework for understanding GBV Psychosocial Support work. This project will be completed and launched globally in mid-2020. Read more about the project here: https://gbvresponders.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Women-Rise-Project-Brief_V2.docx

This is the second in our series called Staff Spotlight, where we highlight the impact of staff who have dedicated their careers to working with women and girls in humanitarian settings. This episode spotlights Zahra, the Senior Women's Protection and Empowerment Manager in Pakistan.

This is the second in our new series of Ask of Anything, a collaboration with the GBV Area of Responsibility's community of practice. In this episode, Sarah Martin interviews Alina Potts of the George Washington University Global Women's Institute to talk about her work, her career pathway and advice she has for others. Read Alina's blog here: https://missinginthemission.com/

Often the measurement of GBV response looks at outputs – number of women and girls receiving services, incidents of GBV, distributions – and overlooks the core question: are women and girls recovering from GBV with the support of GBV response services? In this episode, we talk about a new tool, the GBV Case Management Outcome Monitoring Toolkit, that aims to change how we measure outcomes. The toolkit is available here: https://gbvresponders.org/response/data-collection-in-service-delivery/#Gender-BasedCaseManagementOutcomeMonitoringToolkit

Psychological First Aid is a practice that “involves humane, supportive and practical help to fellow human beings suffering serious crisis events.” In this episode we talk with Sonia Rastogi and Jessica Izquierdo of the GBV Guidelines Implementation Support Team about psychological first aid, the need, the practice, related self-care practices, and where to learn more. Check out these resources referenced in the episode: Psychological First Aid: Guide for Field Workers from WHO https://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/guide_field_workers/en/ GBV Guidelines Pocket Guide: https://gbvguidelines.org/en/pocketguide/