Bango linaloonesha ofisi za TGNP
TGNP MTANDAO is pleased to announce the 11th Gender Festival which will focus on “Twenty Years Of Transformative Feminist Struggle For Women’s Rights, Gender Equity And Social Justice – Where Are We? What Next” within the broad theme of Gender, Democracy and Development. The Festival will take place from the 3rd – 6th September.
TGNP MTANDAO is an activist civil society advocating for feminist social transformation that leads to women’s rights, gender equity, social justice, and access to and control over resources by women, youth and other marginalised groups. The organisation works to transform structures, policy and resource allocation by operating at grassroots levels. Key strategies include movement building, participatory action research, policy, budget and media engagement with strategic links to national regional and international levels. The organisation aims to build a transformative feminist social movement that can contribute towards achieving a transformed society with gender equity, democracy, human rights and social justice.
The Gender Festival is a four day open forum for likeminded individuals and organisations to come together to share experiences and knowledge, to celebrate achievements and assess challenges ahead, to strengthen networking and coalition-building, to build capacity and to contribute to public debate and plan collectively for social change from a feminist perspective. The first Gender Festival was organised in 1996; since then TGNP, FemAct and their grassroots partners have successfully organised a series of 10 Festivals on a variety of themes, reflecting the burning issues of the day. The number of participants has steadily grown from around 400 in 1996 to over 5,000 in 2011.
Gender Festival Objectives:
• Celebrating twenty years of transformative feminist struggles for women’s rights, gender equity and social justice
• Enhancing understanding of the global context of patriarchy and neoliberalism, its impact on marginalised women and their communities, their resistances and struggles against these and other oppressive structures, and alternative strategies for sustainable, equitable and just development and growth
• Advancing understanding of transformative feminist theory and practice, including documentation of concrete specific struggles against patriarchy and neoliberalism, and how to strengthen the feminist movement at all levels
• Planning realisable strategies of action at all levels for the building of the transformative feminist movement in Tanzania and Africa, and
• Strengthening feminist consciousness, networking, coalition-building and alliances as building blocks towards a panAfrican transformative feminist movement.
Plenary sessions are held every morning to provide the conceptual framework for the day. Mid Day Workshops will be held from the second day of the Gender Festival. During the second and third day afternoon workshops will be organised on relevant skills building for strengthening advocacy, organising and movement building initiatives.
Day One 3rd September 2013: Opening of Gender Festival 2013
Twenty Years Of Transformative Feminist Struggle For Women’s Rights, Gender Equity And Social Justice – Where Are We? What Next?
Day Two 4th September 2013: The Struggle for Land Rights and Economic Justice: Return Resources to the People
• Struggles over Natural Resources and their Use in the context of ‘land-grabbing’
• Struggles for food sovereignty: control over sources of food, over the basic decisions on how to produce food, using what technology, and control over the basic means of production
• Politics of Trade, Aid and Debt at all levels, including struggles over GMO technology in agriculture
• Struggles for Economic Independence of Women in Rural and Urban areas (case studies) analysis of commonalities and differences, strategies to forge a unified struggle
Afternoon Skills Building Sessions for Organising and Movement Building: Media Usage, Writers Forum, Analysis and Research, Organising, Canvas art, Fundraising, Infotainment, Photo gallery, ICT.
Day Three 5th September 2013: Feminist Struggles for Democracy in Civil society and the State: Constitution Reform or Revolution?
• Struggles for People Centred Constitutions in Africa
• Sexual and Reproductive Rights as Constitutional Issues, including Struggles over Bodily Integrity and GBV
• Women struggles for power and voice in electoral politics (cases)
• Struggles over gender budget reviews and tracking at local and central government level
Afternoon Skills Building Sessions for Organising and Movement Building: Media Usage, Writers Forum, Analysis and Research, Organising, Canvas art, Fundraising, Infotainment, Photo gallery, ICT.
Day Four 6th September 2013: Strategies for Feminist Organising and Movement Building for the next Twenty Years: Building a panAfrican Feminist Movement
• The workshops during this day will focus on the ‘Way Forward’: How do we carry on the momentum achieved during the Gender Festival in the future? How do we take back the skills that we have learnt to our respective communities/groups? How do we improve on existing work based on the discussions of the first three days?
• Closing Plenary
You and your organization/ group can participate in the Festival through:
• Preparing presentation of different kinds (papers, poetry, video, song, art performance) or organizing a workshop panel or debate relating to the various sub-themes above;
• Coordinating a workshop or skills building session;
• Mobilising and facilitating a large group from your country, region, area, constituency or organization to attend and contribute at the festival;
• Creating an interactive exhibition that may include publications, photographs, natural products, handcraft and others;
• Preparing Artistic Performances related to Festival themes;
• Active attendance and contributions during the Festival;
• Financial contribution and fundraising to support specific events; and
• Other forms of contribution to enhance the festival.
Participation is open to all interested organizations and individuals, who are encouraged to fundraise for their participation. In order to secure funding, TGNP can provide letters of invitation to support fundraising. The official languages of the festival will be Kiswahili and English.
We look forward to your communication with the Gender Festival organizing team, based at the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) through gf_coordinator@tgnp.org