Global Partnership Programs

In addition to our Civil Society Organization (CSO) Strengthening Program partners, we also work with a range of international development agencies, including bilateral and multilateral donors and international NGOs, to build and apply knowledge of institutional change for gender equality to policy and programming, expanding the space for positive action on gender equality and women’s rights.

UNIFEM: Gender at Work is partnering with UNIFEM in a five-year program entitled Gender and Democratic Governance in Development: Delivering Basic Services for Women supported by the Government of Norway. Focused on institutional change for gender equality, this program aims to build a body of knowledge, practical programming experience and methodologies and tools to improve the way public goods and services are delivered to women. Specifically, the program will develop and implement concrete, practical innovations in a set of pilot countries to improve service delivery to women, to build enhanced capacity of women to engage in and influence changes in institutional delivery systems and to promote evidence-based organizational change for gender equality in service delivery. Gender at Work in particular will lead the work on growing a knowledge and advocacy network on improving service delivery to women that is grounded in country-level practice and results in gender-sensitive evaluation of governance.

UNICEF and UNIFEM: Gender at Work is partnering with these organizations to implement strong gender equality projects and to serve as a pilot for successful work by other countries. This initiative involves working with three UN country teams, using an action-learning process over the course of two years. The specific objective is to highlight how the process of collaboration between UN system partners works, how it can be strengthened, what can realistically be done and where such innovation could occur. These innovations are meant to help the UN deliver better on gender equality on the ground, but also to identify how HQ support mechanisms need to be strengthened to help the country teams implement cohesive and effective women’s empowerment and gender-equality programs.

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC): In early 2008, Gender at Work carried out a gender mainstreaming evaluation of the SDC. Subsequently, SDC invited one of Gender at Work’s Senior Associates to assist with integrating gender equality into their newly restructured organization at headquarters and in the Cuba country program.

Aga Khan Foundation Canada: Gender at Work has been implementing an action-learning process on gender equality and institutional change with ten Aga Khan Canada partner organizations beginning in January 2009.

Oxfam Canada: Gender at Work will be implementing Team Planning, an action-learning process, with Oxfam Canada's international programs team starting in May 2009. Recently, Gender at Work completed an intensive capacity-building program with six Oxfam partners in the Horn of Africa.

Other Global Partners include

* Oxfam Novib
* Oxfam Quebec
* United Nations Development Program
* United Nations Population Fund
* Women’s Environment and Development Organization

“What struck me is, as we are sitting in this room, we are all engaging with some sort of activism that’s linking to a broader goal [of bringing change]. And to bring that in context with the state of where the women’s movement is today … [with] us sitting around this room, I see people who form part of the women’s movement. We are doing our work in our different provinces but when we come together like this we see how our work kind of connects with the work other people are doing.”

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