By Amreen Binte Azad, from Rajshahi

BARCIK recently organized a two-day “Training Workshop on Gender Diversity, and Human Rights” in Rajshahi, bringing together community leaders, local youths, and all the staff members of BARCIK Rajshahi Resource Centre for a collaborative and engaging learning experience.

Shaheda Azbela Purna, Associate Coordinator (Research) of BARCIK, and Shahidul Islam, Regional Coordinator of Barendra region of BARCIK facilitated the two day sessions respectively aiming at enhancing participants’ understanding of gender concepts, diversity and human rights frameworks.

The workshop began with an expectation sharing session, where participants wrote down their questions and interests around what they wanted to know regarding gender and diversity from the training. These were displayed for open reflection, with a commitment to address them throughout the training.

Key topics on the first day included the difference between sex and gender, gender roles, gender diversity, gender mainstreaming. Participants took part in a participatory exercises identifying and listing traits typically assigned to men and women. Then came a twist, the titles “men” and “women” under which the traits were written were interchanged. The simple switch invoked discussion on the socially constructed nature of gender roles. Group work followed, where participants identified issues faced by men or women and proposed practical solutions. Sessions also covered gender and globalization, gender in agroecology, and how local awareness and collective action can influence policy. Discussions drew from field level experiences and were grounded in BARCIK’s approach.

On the second day, diversity, pluralism, and rights were discussed. Participants reflected on real life experiences to showcase their understanding on diversity and pluralism, they wrote their thoughts in cards and later all the cards were displayed for group discussion. Afterwards, in a participatory session on rights, three groups were formed and they were assigned to list examples of rights getting violated in society drawing from their field and community experience.

The second half of the second day of the training workshop covered fundamental rights, human rights, CEDAW, and the National Women Development Policy, linking them to community based advocacy. There was also a dedicated session on women’s leadership, where the facilitator discussed how field workers can identify potential leaders and support their visibility.

The workshop concluded with reflections from participants where they shared that the learnings from the sessions will enable them to better reflect on field-level realities, and will allow them to critically examine gender roles and rights violations, and explore ways to integrate overall knowledge into community advocacy and program implementation.