Laura Cala Vergel, PMEL analyst with Share-Net Columbia, shares her experiences attending this year’s programme.

The Feminist Edge programme offers a holistic training between pedagogical concepts and practices, providing participants with key tools to strengthen their work as gender trainers. The course has been a transformative experience that has allowed me to deepen my knowledge and understanding of gender thanks to the tutors, guests and participants. 

I would like to thank Share-Net International, the Knowledge Platform on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, for their support and for allowing me to participate in this year’s cohort, the learning acquired definitely expanded my capacities for developing knowledge products focused on the promotion of sexual and reproductive health and rights, now I feel more confident because I have better tools to design and carry out virtual and face-to-face trainings and workshops, essential for my work as an Analyst of Share-Net Colombia.

Since the course has ended, I would like to highlight two approaches that facilitated and extended my learning process. 

The balance between the three domains of the programme

The Feminist Edge programme is delivered from three capacities: Conceptual depth and clarity, Training skills and methods, and Feminist Practices. The programme effectively manages to find a point of balance between these capacities through theoretical-practical sessions and materials focused on facilitating the understanding of concepts and topics such as the history of power relations based on gender, gender mainstreaming, gender training, intersectionality, and feminist pedagogical principles. 

The sessions were dynamic, with a lot of space for collective discussions. In addition, there were also practical activities that allowed us to apply the knowledge learnt, testing our ability to apply them in a contextualised and critical way, and inviting us to challenge traditional theories from our experience. 

In my case, the programme awakened a special interest in me thanks to the theoretical discussions focused on sociology, development and politics around gender, areas of knowledge that must be constantly updated, I found it enjoyable to revisit and restructure concepts and theories, but always keeping a focus on improving practice in my work as a gender trainer, which was my main interest. In the sessions facilitated by the UN Women Training Centre I got the chance to strengthen aspects related to my pedagogical skills with specific technical knowledge around evaluation and delivery of the trainings, this included concrete simple activities that we as trainers can take into account when we want to measure the results of training, something that I personally tend to leave aside because of the belief that evaluation processes are difficult and costly.

In my work at Share-Net, the SHSR knowledge platform, we have had opportunities to design and conduct gender-sensitive pieces of training, however, I have never received any formal education in pedagogical strategies, everything I knew about this has been acquired through experience. For this reason, I believe that the course provided the tools that I felt were needed for a more conscious and coherent design process, for example, in the final assignment where we had to design a training session, I modified a piece of training that I had already applied in the past in my work, in the hope that this adjusted session would be useful to me in the future.

Horizontal or participant-focused learning

In this edition of the course, we had a very diverse group of people from different contexts around the world, all with great knowledge and experience which greatly enriched the sessions. The activities and contents are designed so that the experiences of the participants make a difference in the way the discussions are developed in the sessions and thanks to this, much of the learning came not only from the tutors, but also from the discussions and points of view of my colleagues. 

The interventions in the sessions reflected the areas of expertise of each participant, which on several occasions made it possible to address different topics from different perspectives, as well as to understand the particularities and priorities in addressing these issues in different parts of the world.

In module 3, which took place in a face-to-face format in Amsterdam, I finally had the opportunity to meet and make friends with my colleagues with whom I have been working since February, I find invaluable the experience of working face-to-face with them while sharing experiences outside the classrooms as well. The course allowed me to create a small network of gender trainers around the world who advocate similar values to mine in completely different spaces, which is very comforting in an area of work where you often feel like you are ‘swimming against the tide’.

Finally, I would like to highlight the great logistical effort behind the execution of the course, the Feminist Edge team, the tutors and the guest experts make the course a very rewarding and enjoyable experience. I would recommend this unique programme to gender trainers around the world, and I also hope that it will inspire a significant change in their approach and understanding of pedagogy around gender issues.

Photos: Mariam Charara Ruiz