From Opportunities to Capacities: A Multi-Sectoral Approach
to Enhancing Gender Responsive Governance
Output2: Capacity Building
To review Capacity Development Frameworks and Approaches at the National Level
In the sphere of capacity building, the idea has been to train the topmost tier
of trainers in rural development, namely, NIRDPR faculty. NIRDPR has the mandate
of conducting training programmes in different development sectors/programmes/policies
with senior level Government officials, SIRD faculty (who in turn train the next
level of trainers in the state), elected members of State Assembly along with district/block
or Panchayat level functionaries. Training NIRDPR faculty in GRG contributes to
mainstreaming gender in training curriculum of NIRDPR and this has a multiplier
effect on vast number of people involved with governance across the nation. The
project has conducted three intensive training programmes including follow up with
all the faculty of NIRDPR on issues such as conceptual framework of gender, gender
and development, gender budgeting, gender in planning and monitoring and gender
in governance.
As a result, the faculty have already demonstrated key changes in their curriculum.
Initially, the Director General, NIRDPR had mandated the inclusion of a gender module
in every training programme conducted at NIRDPR. The training in GRG has enabled
faculty to look at gender as a cross cutting theme in all their modules. There have
been instances, for example of the restructuring of a course (post graduate diploma
in rural management) to incorporate much more intensive issues of gender and governance.
The Centre for Panchayati Raj has introduced an entire course on gender and governance
as part of its training curriculum. Many of the centres are beginning to appreciate
that gender is not a separate chapter in their training and research but an integral
category of analysis in everything they do.
The follow up workshop with a batch of faculty after a gap of six months has served
not only as a refresher course but also as an assessment of how they have applied
the learnings to their trainings and research. It has also been an occasion for
the faculty to come together to share and discuss their work through a gender lens.