- We Have Built Internal Capacity for Gender Mainstreaming
Throughout 2015, PIND projects and operations personnel were trained, coached and mentored on gender mainstreaming in their different spheres of work. Although gender beliefs and mindsets take time to break, an assessment of the effectiveness of our gender capacity building efforts conducted in October 2015 showed we have made good progress as it revealed the following:
- Increased gender knowledge/awareness with lots of ‘Aha’, ‘I now see’
‘’Gender is about ensuring equal opportunity for both men and women to benefit, that none is disadvantaged’’
- Gender is now a popular discourse
‘’We talk a lot about gender… sometimes we even quarrel about it’’
- Gender is not left to chance – It is being consciously made to happen
“I have made conscious decisions to mainstream gender in my work.”
- Gender knowledge is being practiced
“We put a lot of emphasis on gender balance in the selection of participants for the just concluded PREVENT Committee training in 9 P4P state chapters’’
- There is gender influencing and advocacy
“I am wearing the gender lens whenever key issues/decisions are being discussed at different meetings/platforms -raising gender perspectives/concerns’’
‘’I had a prior misunderstanding that gender issues pertained to women alone. With this corrected, at meetings in PIND and outside PIND where I participate, I now try to influence others with this new thinking and correct those who have same misunderstanding’’
PIND’s strategic plan 2015-2019 prioritizes integrating gender and youth participation and mainstreaming their issues into every aspect of project design and implementation and its operation. In 2013, we set up a gender committee with a mandate to ‘reduce gender inequalities that may exist in PIND’s programming, organizational endeavors and project intervention’.
Through our four programs of Economic Development; Capacity Building; Peace Building; and Advocacy and Analysis, we are making efforts to address gender gaps in accessing productive resources and promoting inclusive socio-economic development in the Niger Delta. PIND envisions an egalitarian and peaceful society that guarantees equal rights and equitable access to and control of productive resources; ensuring that individuals are empowered to create wealth and overcome poverty and disease irrespective of sex and other demographic differentials.