Ms Mary Njeri-ECWD

Women are at the heart of what happens in the country especially in development. She identifies with resources like access to water, fuel, food and these things have become unaffordable especially in the rural areas. These are the issues that really affect people and a woman with her caring and mothering nature will ensure that changes are brought in these areas.

When it comes to peace issues in our country, women are the most affected because they view the victims as their children or as a part of their families and it is the woman who suffers when they see their children suffering, when there is nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep and nothing to cook for her family. Women are always at the key of when a conflict is about to happen but since they are not recognized as solutions to conflict no one bothers.
If women come into leadership, they will be able to manage conflicts that arise especially in rural areas.

List of activities at ECWD

1. High Level Lobbying – ECWD will engage various political party decision makers through lobbying meetings in a dialogue for the creation of more democratic space for women within political party structures. Political parties are the only vehicles through which women can access leadership space in parliament and local authorities yet very few women are nominated or recruited by political parties and subsequently provided with financial resources. It is hoped that at the end of the lobbying process political parties will create ample space for women aspirants, embrace gender equity principles and that women shall be empowered to participate effectively within political party processes and structures.

2. Documentation of processes, lessons learnt and achievements and the dissemination of such knowledge – ECWD will engage in a continuous programme monitoring, evaluation for timely and appropriate interventions and will also document all programme processes and activities to capture best practices, lessons learnt and achievements of the programme as a whole.

3. Building the capacities of women and strengthening their power of numbers as a key constituency through organizing, in principles of transformative leadership and in shaping decisions that will promote and protect women’s human rights and security in their respective communities as leaders and aspiring leaders – ECWD will conduct several capacity building and knowledge and skills enhancing training workshops that will equip and enhance the knowledge and skills of aspiring parliamentary and civic women candidates in areas of political leadership development, electoral processes, campaign management, political party alignment, resource mobilization, issue – based communication and transformative leadership.

4. Campaigns to change attitudes about the value of women’s leadership – ECWD will utilize its wide network of trained field paralegals, chiefs, civic educators and a cadre of 36Gender Civic Educators (GCE’s) to sensitize and educate the public on gender and governance issues and the importance of equity of representation in democratic governance in this case parliamentary and civic governance levels. The GCE’s will be linked and mandated to profile and build popular support for aspiring parliamentary and civic candidates.

Upcoming GGP workshops

1. 3 Lobbying meetings with at least 25 select political party decision-makers and officials – March, June and September 2007.
2. 6 Lobbying and advocacy meetings for affirmative action within constitutional review committees and all other affiliated structures - March, April, may, July September and October 2007
3. Conduct training workshops for women parliamentarians – one was conducted in January
4. Conduct 2 all 4-day capacity building workshops for current and aspiring women councilors – April and June 2007.
5. Installation of a Gender Rapid Response Unit (GRRU) for 3 months in ECWD offices to respond to all GCE correspondence and reporting gender based violence – July, August and September 2007
6. Conduct three (1) day gender budgeting analysis and gender responsive resource allocation training sessions with 5 members each from the Central Planning Units of 10 key Government Ministries – March and April 2007.

Governance decision making in Kenya reflects increased resources to national priorities based on gender analysis of key needs, opportunities and challenges and supports women’s social and economic security and to protect overall women’s human rights.

Support group for women aspirants

ECWD has formed a support group/loose network comprising of 14 women aspirants. The working group will act as advisory, support and networking group. Sisterhood needs to be encouraged; to apply the same strategies that men apply successfully to garner support in political campaigns. ECWD can provide the meeting space and support communication logistics to sustain this much-needed initiative. It was decided that subject to budgetary support a resource person will be available to advice the aspirants on strategic issues during the monthly meeting. The structure of the network was undecided however all participants agreed to a meeting once a month – last Thursday of every month. The agenda for the first meeting will be to discuss campaign budgeting strategies and plans. The aspirants will also submit their personal profiles to be dispatched to media and radio stations as the need arises.

Training of Mobilizers

ECWD conducted a 4 day residential training and capacity building workshop for its community mobilisers referred to as Gender Civic Educators (GCE’s). A total of 42 participants attended the workshop from 15 constituencies – 3 GCE’s have been allocated to each candidate. Although ECWD is implementing GGP in only 12 constituencies, an additional 12 mobilisers were in cooperated into the training from the following constituencies: Belgut, Bureti, Nyeri Town and Makadara. The GCE’s were trained on constituency mapping techniques, electoral process, gender and political leadership, how to conduct candidate and constituency SWOT analyses, mitigation strategies against Gender based violence and community mobilization strategies. The GCE’s will conduct constituency situational analyses in the month of March after which they will be reporting on campaign issues on a monthly basis.

WIPL and the Role of ECWD

The Education Centre for Women in Democracy (ECWD) was founded and registered on 22 July 1993 by Kenyan women as a, non-partisan and not-for-profit national lobby and advocacy institution. ECWD is a registered NGO in Consultative (Roster) Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).