Grassroots Women's International Academy
While grassroots innovations in development practice are highly valued by international planners and policy makers, grassroots knowledge is easily lost to people outside the practising community. Huairou’s Grassroots Academies are designed to change that situation.
Introduced in 2000, Grassroots Women’s International Academies are intensive teaching/learning workshops which transfer grassroots knowledge, document it, and stimulate policy changes.
Their primary goal is to provide an opportunity for grassroots women to exchange development knowledge. Thus grassroots women are the primary teachers and learners and professionals are invited to join the educational forums only when their participation will benefit the women.
Each Academy is organized around a theme. Groups are selected from around the world for their interest or expertise in the subject. They present practices from their home communities in formal and informal settings. They draw out common threads, identify common challenges and craft policy recommendations.
Ultimately, the Academy invites policy makers to join them in in discussing how to bring the best of the harvested knowledge to bear on development problems.
Today, grassroots academies are surfacing knowledge, spreading successful solutions and, in conversations with development people across sectors, creating new, sustainable strategies for development.
The Academy teaching and learning model drew on techniques developed by GROOTS International and Mother Centers International Network (MINE).
The Academies
2008: GRASSROOTS LAND ACADEMY
Entebbe, Uganda
The Huairou Commission’s Land and Housing Campaign, through the Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA) project, held in collaboration with the Uganda Community-Based Association for Child Welfare (UCOBAC) the first ever Grassroots Women’s Land Academy. Fifty-five participants from 31 different organizations and fourteen countries attended this exciting event. The Land Academy had a strong focus on experience sharing and peer learning and provided a unique space for community-based grassroots leaders to celebrate and share the important knowledge and skills that grassroots women have been employing to fight for women’s rights to land, housing, property and other core productive assets.
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2007: GRASSROOTS ACADEMY IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Lima, Peru
The Grassroots Academy, sponsored by the Huairou Commission, was a four-day event for grassroots women to network, share knowledge and strengthen their presence in the region. It was an historic first gathering of grassroots women in Latin America. The work focused on Economic Empowerment, Sustainable Agriculture, Community Organizing,
Governance, Health and Domestic Violence, Safer Cities and Land and
Housing.
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Download the Report in Spanish here >
2007: UNITING COMMUNITIES AROUND CAREGIVING
Nairobi, Kenya
GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission co-sponsored the Grassroots Women's International Academy as a part of the Huairou Commission's program at the YWCA International Women's Summit. The four-day Grassroots Academy showcased the strategies, successes, challenges and leadership of grassroots women and a particular focus was put on what grassroots women have been able to accomplish from their own initiative, without outside support from donors. This practice-sharing led to concrete follow up plans being laid, including for peer exchanges and expansion of the Home-Based Care Alliance.
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2006: WOMEN BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES AMID RAPID URBANIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
Vancouver, Canada
GROOTS International led the Grassroots Women's International Academy as a part of the Huairou Commission's women's program of activities at the World Urban Forum III. The five-day Academy focused on the themes of WUFIII, primarly strengthening cities. Other major themes addressed were urban sustainability, social inclusion and partnership and finance, all of which are directly relevant to the grassroots women leaders who gathered in the Academy.
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2005: GRASSROOTS ACADEMY AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AIDS AND STIS IN AFRICA
Abuja, Nigeria
Grassroots women from Africa are the major caregivers in the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. In a Grassroots Academy they shared experiences, updated strategies, expanded their networks and refined grassroots policy recommendations for presentation at the ICASA. The event was hosted by the International Women's Communication Center (IWCC).
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2004: ON ENGENDERING GOVERNANCE
Barcelona, Spain
Over the past several years, under the program name Local to Local Dialogues, a number of Huairou organizations have initiated partnerships with their local governments – some of them dramatically successful. This Academy brought those groups together with non-member groups to share, exchange and inspire new strategies. Because the forum featured governance partnerships, local authorities presented their experiences and evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the projects they co-sponsored.
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2003: GRASSROOTS WOMEN’S AIDS PREVENTION & CARE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Nairobi, Kenya
This three day academy brought together more than forty grassroots women from 8 African countries to share and discuss their community approaches to preventing AIDs and caring for its victims. Their findings were presented to The 13th International Conference on AIDS & STIs in Africa (ICASA).
2001: POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF GRASSROOTS PRACTICES Istanbul+5
United Nations, USA
Held immediately before Istanbul+5, so that its findings could inform policy-making, this academy extracted policy implications of the grassroots women's practices on engendering local governance, women's access to control of and management of land, debunking micro-credit, community education, post disaster development, women's safety and housing.
2000: SURVEY of GRASSROOTS PRACTICES
Expo 2000, Germany
The inaugural grassroots academy supported trainings over 6 weeks by 42 groups from around the world. It constituted a major, live survey of grassroots development knowledge and concluded with a dialogue on effective partnering practices.
Sponsored by Expo 2000, Hanover, Mutterzentrem-Bundesverband e.V., SOS-Mutterzentrum Salzgitter,
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