3. Facilitation, Feminism and Gender Development Workshop, Mae Sot

On a daily basis, among the BWU leaders in the camps, the migrant community and members of BWU, women encounter unspeakable violations against women due to their gender. Regrettably, the BWU leaders in the camps themselves unconsciously doubly violated their fellow women in their dealings with them. After an evaluation and analysis of the entire BWU programs and its working staff based in the town and regional leaders in the camps and the borders of India-Burma and China-Burma border, we encountered various weaknesses. BWU has a program, which regularly organizes a monthly discussion forum among the migrant community, the refugee camps and the staff actively working in the programs.

We found out that there is a lack of facilitation and coordinating skills for the discussions and a lack of leadership skills on behalf of the staff leading the programs while leading the development and persuading the members under their lead. This is troublesome since BWU as an organization that strongly advocates gender equality and is eager to encourage women to know about feminism and implement it in practice. Even though our leaders in the region and programs are strongly committed to their work and have experiences of attending other kinds of training and in such a way gain various knowledge, they do still not completely understand and practice a gender-sensitive approach. Thus the BWU will commit more resources and trainings towards the organization’s capacity building program.

The workshop was held on 19 to 25 October 2006 in Mae Sot where BWU executive committee members, central committee members, programs’ coordinators, staffs all together 18 people attended the workshop and the workshop was mainly facilitated by Ma Noe Noe Htet San and Ma Tin Tin Nyo. The workshop aimed to grab the chances to put the ideology of the information on feminism, gender development, facilitation skills, leadership skills, and the important of women political participation in the movement, transitional period and in the future Burma.

In the workshop, the members of BWU have learned the meaning of facilitation, qualities of facilitation, daily thought of facilitation, can I be facilitator, results and effectiveness of women movement, the biggest hindrances, challenges and difficulties of women movement, how to transform it, pro-active action , problem posing method leaning, good management, what is feminism, qualities of good speakers, SWOT analysis to for self improvement and organizational review by critically analysis oneself and organization, time management, study on women political literature, learn gender discrimination, how to change it, ways to approach for educating gender issues, quota systems, affirmative action, women participation in the politics of western, Asia and Burma etc…