A few years ago, Gender at Work was invited to accompany the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) on a journey of creation and experimentation in developing the suite of resources to support feminist organizational capacity strengthening. The outcome was the FOCS Toolkit launched in August 2021.
Gender at Work has worked with more than 150 organizations globally to support organizational learning and change processes seeking to promote cultures of equality and inclusion. From this experience, we know that ‘walking the talk’ on feminist values in our organizations is not easy.
We are constantly asking: what will take to build feminist organizations that are centred around cultures of equality, that promote relationships founded on love and respect? How do we build consciousness around being connected to the earth, the community, the people we work with?
As we embarked on the work with IWDA, we knew that it was essential to create a flexible approach and tools for feminist organizations to explore what FEMINIST organizational capacity looks like from their perspectives – and from this, to imagine strategies to grow, strengthen and transform organizations in ways that are consistent with feminist values.
We also knew that creating safe, engaging spaces for reflection and strategizing is one way to bring our practice in line with our feminist values.
The collection of 6 resources developed by Gender at Work Associates in collaboration with IWDA provide practical guidance and tools on how to create and sustain spaces to strengthen organizational capacities in ways that are consistent with feminist values.
For more information on the toolkit and how to access the materials check this out: https://iwda.org.au/resource/feminist-organisational-capacity-strengthening/