On Feb 8th through 12th of February, 40 grassroots women leaders and NGO partners from 22 organizations from 13 African countries, organized in community-based grassroots groups, women's savings clubs, NGOs and women's alliances, came together for the 3rd Annual Land Academy organized by the Huairou Commission, through the Women's Land Link Africa Initiative, held in Lusaka, Zambia.
Land Academies provide an opportunity for all participations to share and exchange experiences, challenges and strategies to strengthen women's ability to claim, gain and maintain land and housing. The format of the Land Academy particularly focuses participants to take time to carefully assess and evaluate the long-term success of their own ongoing work as on land and housing, as grassroots women leaders and NGO partners within and across their countries. Monitoring and evaluation techniques were shared that allow for a capture of the important work and that is also adoptable and adaptable in grassroots communities.
The Academy featured a Partner's Day Dialogue, whereby representatives of the Zambia Land Alliance, the Zambia Law & Development Commission, Zambia Times, YMCA, and Department of Community Development participated in an in-depth discussion with participants about the controversies surrounding the difference between customary land inheritance and state land, as well as the elements to successful and strategic partnerships. A new addition to this year's Academy, Huairou Commission partnered with the Institute for Housing & Urban Development Studies for a Land Court Simulation exercise, whereby participants acted out three mock Land Court Tribunals "deciding" contentions land and inheritance issues to prepare participants to understand and advocate for the issues. Finally, the Academy served as an organizing and planning platform, in which grassroots women and their NGO partners determined their desired long term accomplishments , and the organizing and strategies necessary to achieve them. Monitoring & Evaluation The overarching theme throughout the Land Academy was 'Monitoring and Evaluating from a Grassroots Women's Perspective'. Participants were asked to unpack a number of important questions, such as What does success look like? What change do we want to see, for ourselves and for the WLLA? How do we measure this? How do you know you have achieved this? What are your measures of success?
These questions led participants to develop grassroots indicators for success. Some examples of success were: --Building the capacity of grassroots women to advocate and speak up for themselves; --Grassroots women gaining back their land and property after being evicted; --Increasing women's level of confidence, presence and participation in decision-making processes and positions; and --Economic empowerment for grassroots women. Identifying how to measure these changes was the following task. This was to support their capacity to develop indicators. Indicators of this success included: increased number of women accessing land, housing and property; increase in the number of women who are actively involved in decision making; improved access to information on land, housing and property rights; increased confidence of grassroots women within WLLA groups communities, and an increased number of reported cases on land rights violations. Through continually revisiting specific aspects of M&E, participants were able to gain a deeper understanding of how to develop objectives related to their land and housing goals, to develop easily monitored and measurable indicators, and to document these in a way that will be helpful for their monitoring to show significant change against objectives.
Partners Day Dialogue The Huairou Commission and Katuba Women's Association invited a number of strategic partners to the Partner's Day Dialogue, including the Zambia Land Alliance, the Zambia Law & Development Commission, the Zambia Times, the Zambia Widows Network, YMCA, and Department of Community Development. The representatives of these organizations came to the Academy to engage in an in-depth discussion about the land situation in Zambia and how to strengthen partnerships between grassroots groups and government or NGO groups. Honorable Member of Parliament Shakafuswa pledged to support women's issues around land and housing, and praised the success of the Katuba constituency has had for women's access and control over land. Annette Nhekairo from the Zambia Law & Development Commission urged the MP to advocate for other constituencies where women were being denied their rights to land, particularly after the death of their husbands. She said, "We are proud of the constituency of Katuba, but success of one constituency is not enough for the whole country. ." The Partnership Dialogue debated the difference between constitutional reform processes and how their translation on the ground, as well as the elements of cooperation needed for strong partnership to advance grassroots women's work and access to land and improving women's economic empowerment. Land Court Tribunals The Institute for Housing and Development Studies, based in the Netherlands, facilitated three innovative 'Land Court Simulations'.
Participants were first surveyed about their opinions about contentious and controversial statements regarding land and inheritance issues. Once their answers were compiled, participants were placed into teams on the opposite side of the argument they had originally agreed with. This gave the session an exciting twist, by encouraging participants to develop arguments, points and tactics to defend their argument against the opposite team. The participants acted out the roles of jury, defense, the opposition and the judges. The three statements were "Land titling ensures equal access to land", "Women should be the recipients of subsidies to the household to have access to land", and "Only women can defend, advocate for and protect for women's issues and rights to land." All the courts produced convincing arguments on either side, and the outcome of the winning teams illustrated that effective preparation is critical to convince others especially around often contentious issues related to land. Land Academy Site Visit Following the Land Court simulations, the Land Academy participants paid a field visit to the Chawama Compound to learn about one the projects of the People's Process and the Homeless and Poor People's Federation of Zambia. The Federation is a national network of grassroots and community groups that have come together through women's savings schemes and income-generating activities.
The Federation has a national network of 45,000 members, and the Chawama project was established in 2006. The Land Academy participants visited the model house that the Federation has built as well as sustainable toilets. Prior to this visit the participants held a focus group discussion meeting with a delegation from the Federation, consisting of women from four different saving schemes from Kalikiliki, George, Chipata, Chawama Compounds, as well as those involved in the toilet building process. The focus group discussion focused on the different activities of the Federation, such as daily savings, the Swalisano Urban Poor Fund, income generating activities, health activities, and land, training & skills development and exchanges. To date, the savings group has amassed a total of $75,000 US from daily savings of approximately 10 cents US of each member. They were using some of the funds for house and sustainable toilet building, community health issues, such as funeral costs, medication and doctor visits. Many of the women were also trained to be constructers so that they would not need to hire builders from outside the community. They built a model house for a formerly homeless woman, and have plans to build many more. The community also set out to improve sanitation conditions by building sustainable toilets, whereby waste is later converted into manure and fertilizer.
The Land Academy participants learned a great deal from the work of the Poor People's Federation of Zambia. The Way Forward The final two days of the Academy were forward-looking planning, debate and advocacy formulation. Participants first broke into regional groups, from Eastern, Western and Southern Africa, and looked back on their achievements since the 2008 and 2009 Land Academies. They used their successes and obstacles as a base to develop 2010 action plans, that included monitoring and evaluation indicators and plans within them. The plans included for example, on further building grassroots women's capacity to claim their rights to land and property through Peer Learning Exchanges, improving community justice processes through increased community paralegal trainings, holding a greater number of grassroots forums, and increasing the use of media as an awareness raising tool, and increasing communication between and among the groups and countries.
The groups closed the day by agreeing to form committees around three leading themes of the Academy, Land Titling research, Land Court replications and Coordination and Communication. The Land Academy was successful for both reviewing past activities and achievements, and finding new ways of moving ahead.
There was lots of excitement in the closing moments of the Academy, as participants left with ideas about the upcoming learning exchanges and land gaining strategies they planned to engage in upon their return home. Contact the Huairou Commission Forging strategic partnerships to advance the capacities of grassroots women worldwide to strengthen and create sustainable communities Huairou Commission info@huairou.org 249 Manhattan Avenue phone: 718-388-8915 Brooklyn, New York 11211 web: http://www.huairou.org
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