Leveraging Community Engagement to enhance gender equality and women's empowerment
Recalling his longstanding experience at FAO, Mr. Gustafson said: “The projects that had the most impact in fact embodied precisely what the four speakers talked about today.”
On Thursday, 11 March 2021, the second of five webinar series on “Community Engagement Days” took place. The event was organized by the Dimitra Clubs Team of the Rural Institutions, Services and Empowerment (RISE) team within FAO’s Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equity Division (ESP), with the support of the Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism (FMM), and in collaboration with the Belgian Development Cooperation. The second webinar, entitled “Community Engagement for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment”, showcased the extent to which community engagement approaches have been promoting the advancement of gender equality and people’s empowerment, including changes in gender relations and roles.
Moderated by Mr. Daniel Gustafson, Special Representative of the Director-General of FAO, and with simultaneous interpretations in English, French and Spanish, the webinar attracted a large turnout of over 130 participants. During the event, four international guest speakers shared their experiences and research insights related to community engagement and community-driven development with a focus on indigenous peoples, gender transformative approaches, positive masculinities and women’s empowerment pathways.
Ms. Margarita Dalton, Professor and researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS), opened the event by presenting her gender research and fieldwork concerned with indigenous communities in Oaxaca. When talking about her experience with indigenous communities and the importance of recognizing women’s commitment to community building, she affirmed that “Deep changes need to be made within the structures of the communities themselves…Women indigenous leaders are proposing profound changes in their communities.”