The Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women (KFAW) annually holds a Program on Gender Mainstreaming Policies for Government Officers commissioned by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA Kyushu International Center). The target group of the training program is officers of central and local governments in developing countries who are in charge of gender mainstreaming policies. The Program is designed to foster the officers’ abilities to develop and implement effective and comprehensive policies to mainstream gender-based perspectives, with the aim of realizing a gender-equal society in the participants’ home countries.
In 2015, the program was held from June 12 (Fri.) to July 8 (Wed.), with a total of seven participants from seven countries: Cambodia, El Salvador, Nigeria, Nepal, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa.
The program participants gave “Country Report” presentations to provide a brief summary of the current state and challenges they face in undertaking gender mainstreaming in their respective countries. Following that, they analyzed problems with each other through discussions and gave advices citing their countries’ case examples as needed, which deepened their mutual understanding.
The program was comprised of lectures, workshops, study tours, and presentations, and was designed to learn concepts, methods, and theory of gender mainstreaming in a comprehensive manner.
In addition to lectures from interdisciplinary perspectives such as “gender budget analysis” and “gender and disasters”, the program offered workshops in which participants had hands-on learning activities with occasional discussions.
In the study tours, they received a lecture and visited Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, and visited a day-care center and an elementary school in Kitakyushu. In addition, they were given training incorporating lectures, site visit and exchange of opinions in a farming village in Fukuoka Prefecture. These tours were aimed at enhancing their knowledge from more profound gender perspectives through the firsthand observations of challenges and undertakings at various sites in Japan.
During the month-long program, participants from countries with different backgrounds, in terms of environment and problems in their home countries, showed respect to one another and built solid relationships of mutual understandings. The program closed with the presentations of Action Plan, in which the participants outlined concrete visions for their future undertakings in their respective countries.
