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LAUNCH: Global Partnerships & Learning Programme

The article promotes the Global Partnerships and Learning programme by UK WBG, focusing on gender-responsive budgeting and collaboration worldwide.

About the programme

The Global Partnerships and Learning programme is a new endeavour of the UK WBG.  Through the programme, we are developing collaborative partnerships with civil society organisations around the world, focusing on gender-responsive budgeting and how it, as a tool, can be employed to achieve transformative outcomes. Drawing on our 30+ years of experience, we work with organisations to support them in engaging effectively in dialogue with their governments to develop policies and allocate resources in ways that improve the lives of women, with an emphasis on the most marginalised women.

We recognise that this work is also a huge learning opportunity for us, to understand what organisations in other parts of the world are working on and understand the contexts they are operating in. In this way, we strive to build networks of solidarity and closer relationships with other organisations imagining a feminist world.

How we work

As a small, feminist organisation based in the Global North, we understand that we occupy a place of power and privilege in a sector that has much anti-racism and decolonising work to do. As an organisation, we are committed to this process and have started our journey in doing this work. We understand our position in a global capitalist system that extracts and distributes wealth in a way that creates, perpetuates and re-enforces severe inequalities and injustices. We also understand that women’s movements are diverse in their needs, aims and demands.

In this project, we seek to work based on principles of collaboration, flexibility, sustainability and solidarity.

Collaboration: We recognise that the concept of ‘training’ often implies a hierarchy between trainer and participants. We use collaborative and participatory training methods, being cognisant of those power dynamics and creating a space within which participants can drive the direction and content of the training. Where appropriate, we seek to facilitate spaces where groups and individuals committed to women’s movements, in all their varieties, can come together to share knowledge, support one another, learn from one another, and build long-lasting relationships founded on principles of exchange and international solidarity.

Flexibility: We recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. We take the time required to understand the objectives of our partner organisation(s), and amend our contributions accordingly, recognising the limits of our knowledge and expertise.

Sustainability: We seek to ensure that the knowledge and learnings generated in training sessions is held by our partners with the view to ultimately eliminating our role as ‘trainer’. For example, this can be through ‘training for trainers’ sessions and sharing of resources (including trainer-specific resources).

Solidarity: We stand in solidarity with partner organisations who are seeking to hold their own governments to account and promote budgets and policies which will bring about gender equality. We recognise that only a global feminist movement can bring about the changes needed, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with our partners and allies across the globe.

Get involved

  • Is your organisation interested in working with us to strengthen gender budgeting mechanisms in-country?
  • Are you keen to set up a regional or national gender budgeting network?
  • Are you interested in learning more about how to influence the budgeting process?
  • Do you want to carry out research on the gendered impacts of economic policy in your context?

We pledge to meet you wherever you are at, even if it is at the very early stages of a project or process. This is most often in the form of:

  • Technical training on gender-responsive budgeting or other aspects of gendered economic analysis
  • Capacity building
  • Strategy development

But we are open to other areas as well. If you have a particular objective in mind, please get in touch and let us know what you are looking for.

Cost and logistics

This is a funded project and as such, we are able to provide much of our inputs for free. Additional costs such as venue hire etc may need to be covered.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most of our international training work is currently being held online. We will continue to review this.

If you are interested in working with us, or finding out more about how we could work together, please email hana.abid@wbg.org.uk, letting us know what you would like to work with us on, and your ideal timeframe.

You can read more about our Global Partnerships & Learning Programme here

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