In Their Own Idiom: Reflections on a Gender Action Learning Program in the Horn of Africa

This paper is a reflection on the process, accomplishments, and the associated capacity building of six organizations in a Gender Action Learning project (GAL) in the Horn of Africa. The program took place over the period of late 2006 to December 2008. All six organizations were partners in the PACE program, an Oxfam Canada capacity building program. The paper tells the story of each of the organizations and discusses the changes they accomplished as described by the participants in workshops and as observed in site visits. This paper focuses on the changes themselves; an associated paper, “In Our Own Way,” reflects on the factors that enabled the organizations to accomplish as much as they did.