Seminar: First step for engaging men for gender equality – April 28th 2012.

April 23, 2012 - PRLog -- This seminar aims to make CBOs, development professionals and CSR representatives aware of the need and ways to include men in their area of development work. It is the first step of a long term training process. ECF plans to conduct several seminars/ workshops over the next year in order to step by step sensitize and train participants on how to involve men in their projects.

Seemantinee Khot, Head CSR of Suzlon Energy Ltd will be the keynote speaker at the seminar. Harish Sadani from MAVA, Achyut Borgaonkar from Tathapi, Dr Mohan Deshpande from Abha and Vandana Poria from Get Through Guides will also be presenting their work.  We at Equal Community Foundation will share our innovative approach and learnings from our ongoing projects.

Event details
Date: April 28th , 2012
Venue: Synergy Hall 1, Suzlon One Earth Campus
Time: 2pm to 6pm

Entry for the seminar is free but registration is mandatory.

Purpose
Over a 100 million women in India experience violence and discrimination at the hands of men. Even though men are the root cause of the problem; fewer than 5% of CBOs seek to tackle this problem by engaging men as part of the solution. We at ECF believe that to achieve gender equality we must engage men and women.

Objectives of the seminar
•   Introduce participants to the approaches adopted by various organizations in working with men.
•   Create awareness and motivate different stakeholders to engage men in their projects that work towards women empowerment and gender equality.
•   Sharing of best practices, models that have worked, and challenges in working with men.
•   Establish a network of people and organisations pursuing the same cause.
•   Understand the obstacles and challenges that stops projects from engaging men

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About Equal Community Foundation

Equal Community Foundation (ECF) pioneers new methods for engaging men to end violence against women. Our project Action for Equality (AFE) identifies and trains male mentors to engage successive generations of men (14-17), and through partnership places them into low-income urban communities in and around Pune. Mentors deliver a unique and attractive programme of cinema, livelihoods and gender training, where adolescent men uncover the crucial role of women in their lives. All graduates of the programme take personal and collective action to reduce violence and discrimination against women in their families and communities. Resulting in the fact that 47% of women living with our graduates report a significant reduction in their experiences of violence or discrimination at the hands of men.