Levelling through links: Empowering grassroots voices

From 14–17 November 2008, close to 2,000 women's rights leaders and activists from around the world met in Cape Town, South Africa, at the 11th Association for Women’s rights In Development (AWID) international forum to discuss the power of movements.

The AWID forum was both a conference and a call to action. Delegates to the forum participated in four days of plenary speeches, interactive sessions, workshops, debates, and creative sessions geared to powerful thinking on gender equality and women's human rights. Delegates also participated in informal caucuses, gala events, cultural activities, and social and political events geared to global and regional networking and alliance building.

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), a pan-African women’s organisation working for the promotion of women’s human rights organised a lunch-hour interactive discussion session at the forum. The theme for discussion was ‘Building better linkages and ensuring more effective strategizing between activists at the grassroots level and those doing advocacy work at regional level’.

FEMNET hosted the discussion as a way of stimulating debate between grassroots level activism and its interconnectivity with regional advocacy work, with a focus on Africa. Women’s movements cannot be sustained without the inclusion of women at the grassroots level.

The aim of the session was to identify gaps and look for a way forward: how to find linkages when everyone is so busy doing work on their respective levels? How to avoid that women’s organisations fighting for policy changes at a national regional or global level fight for issues which grassroots women do not see the importance of, such as women at the regional level fighting for legislation around abortion, when grassroots women would rather prioritise the fight against poverty?

The session’s keynote speaker was Esther Mwaura from GROOTS Kenya, a network of community-based women’s organisations and individuals. Esther became involved after the Beijing International Women’s Conference in 1995, where she encountered grassroots women who had travelled to the conference and were given a space to speak on their issues, in front of high level officials. She realised that there was a lack of space back in her home country, Kenya, for grassroots women to articulate their needs as part of a movement. She therefore initiated GROOTS in order to deal with the fragmentation of grassroots women, and strengthen the link between them. GROOTS now works in 85 countries. In Kenya, 2,500 local women’s projects are part of the organisation.

The idea behind GROOTS International came about in 1985 through a process initiated by six prominent women’s activists attending the Nairobi United Nations World Conference that year. The six women reacted to the fact that the majority of women experiencing the problems being discussed at the conference around issues of economic empowerment, lack of water and sanitation and so forth were not actually represented at the conference. The women recognised the need of supporting grassroots women in collectively identifying their needs in relation to the challenges they are facing, and wanted to partner with grassroots women.

Esther Mwaura criticised NGOs for doing a lot of networking amongst themselves without supporting grassroots. She did however warn participants that this would have to be done cautiously to ensure that women first have a strong base at the local level before they are brought to the district, national, and international ones.

She used the example of money for HIV/AIDS, where women at the grassroots are bearing the brunt of the work but receiving very little of the money to support their work. Members of GROOTS are now involved with mapping how the funding can reach them at grassroots level.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS

Participants were asked to reflect on the gaps identified between the different levels of activism. The following were key observations by the participants.

One key issue which was raised was lack of translation of documents into local languages to enable women at the community level to grasp issues discussed at the national level. Grassroots activists challenged activists at the regional level to ensure that all vital information would be made available in local languages if the women at grassroots are to participate and benefit from it.

They also called for NGOs at the national or regional policy level working to advance women’s human rights issues to ensure that they constantly engage communities so that ownership is felt by women at the grassroots level. What is important is to form relationships with policy makers, and also to access their advisors. The issue of language and literacy levels are important. You don’t need grassroots women to speak English to influence development. It is better to empower them so that she can do strong constituency level work. Many of these women have realised the need to educate themselves. It is just a question on how we mentor these women. All policies are actually meant to empower people at the grassroots level.

An important point is that NGOs should never be the ones building links or representing with local government agencies on the ground. But we still do it; we go and speak on behalf of the community with district officers and development officers. We must step out and let the grassroots women themselves negotiate with the district officers and development officers. Activists at regional level need to create relationships with existing networks and consult with open doors between organisations and networks, and leave space for the grassroots women to do what they can do at the grassroots level.

Participants at the dialogue identified five key issues which can help us build a better linkage in the African women movement:
• Dialogue
• Literacy (functional/literary)
• Getting the real issues from grassroots women – be sure to include their views!
• Share information between the levels – create communication strategies
• Assess different areas of capacity building for women in Africa.

Lastly participants implored FEMNET as a pan-African organisation to be practically involved in assessing the different areas of capacity of women’s movements and groups and also help in unifying the women’s movement in Africa. The discussion was intended to provide input for FEMNET to strengthen its work in bridging the gap between different levels of activism.

At the end of the discussion it was clear that African women activists need to be more inclusive by opening up spaces for voices from the community in order to build strong partnership, and by empowering those they often speak for and encouraging them to speak for themselves. It is important for the elite activists to share strategies with women at the community level who have little experience in the women’s movement in Africa. The power of the women’s movement in Africa lies in building strong linkages between activists at the regional level and those doing work at community level.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
* Carlyn Hambuba works for the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) in Nairobi-Kenya as a Communications Officer.