 And we will be sharing this with a wider group. And also, we ask that for those communications focal points that we have on the webinar, and for all of you others who are on Twitter and Facebook, please use your hashtags, which you will be able to see here. So you can use a hashtag girlsinspire or hashtag and child marriage. And you can also post any comments on the community of practice on girlsinspire.org. So without any further delay, as we wait for other people to come in, I'd like to pass it on to Ms. Frances Ferrara, who is the Senior Advisor for Women and Girls and the Team Leader for Education here at the Common Welcome Learning, to make the opening remarks. Thank you so much. I'm speaking to the women now, so I'm speaking by ask to you. Thank you so much, Shireen, for organizing this webinar. Continue over, join us. This is very important to us that we have women access to this. And today, we have a very accomplished presenter, Yusie Zanglo, she is our deputy party member. Yusie Zanglo has been working for just under three years. And she has more than a decade of experience in international development in various sectors. But more importantly, you change the mainstream human rights, which are two of the more crucial areas in our work. And she has worked for an agency, a private joint firm, and also for the women in the government. Presenting very much all of that kind of thing to us today because it's very important to have this in mind. Our president of the webinar, Boko Spire, he is very excited to listen to you and also to interact with you in order to ask questions. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Frances. I'll pass it on to Ms. Roseanne Wong. Thanks for me. Thank you, Frances, for the warm welcome. Good morning and good evening to all of you. It's always a pleasure to engage with colleagues in the field. From Sunny Vancouver this morning, I greet you. I'm going to launch right into the presentation part of the webinar. I think that the focus of this webinar, at least from my understanding, is that the greater focus will be on the latter part, which is the discussion part, learning from each other and learning about the ways that you are mainstreaming gender in your own communities and organizations. The beginning part of the presentation will look at a definition of gender equality, gender equity, look at gender parity and its relationship to learning. I will share Cole's approach to gender mainstreaming art definition, which is really shaped by our own institutional context in communities that we serve. And as I mentioned, a discussion at the end on your own experience in the field, excuse me, mainstreaming gender. And perhaps I may pause at particular sections to ask if any comments or questions at that time and then we can proceed to the discussion part at the end. I want to begin with a definition of what is gender equality as this is core in the work that you are doing to end child or leave and force marriage. But before being able to talk about that, it's difficult to not address or not talk about the definition of gender. And I just wanted to say that gender is socially determined. It's something that is assimilated and learned. It is the way that as a society views the roles, responsibilities, behaviors and characteristics of women and men, boys and girls. These roles and behaviors and characteristics can change over time and they will vary within the culture. So gender equality, according to the text here, is equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. It is equitable access to education, employment and livelihoods options. And I want to stress that gender equality is not equal to women and girls. It is about creating equal conditions so that both males and females can fulfill their human potential and contribute to economic and social development. A case in point is that at this moment we are in our own approach to gender equality. We are looking at boys in the Caribbean who at this moment are actually falling behind in primary and secondary education and at the tertiary levels falling, dropping out. And Nicole is working hard now to help bring those boys back to education and learning. So I just wanted to give you a concrete example of how we are looking at gender equality at coal. One of the colleagues in the pre-webinar mentioned gender discrimination and I just wanted to touch upon that. Gender discrimination is very much, it works very much against gender equality and it's about anything, any action that denies right or opportunity to an individual based on a person's gender. And this brings us to the idea that gender roles or relationships in society between males and females involves power relationships. So in any society we have a division of labor where men and women are assigned certain roles in society based on and I highlight perceived characteristics and attributes instead of ability and skills. So for example women and girls are often assigned to household or child raising responsibilities, not necessarily because they are better at this but because society expects them to do those particular roles and functions. But the consequence is that because women and girls are often in a private domain and working at homes and less involved in decision making in a wider society they will have different less access and control to resources, decision making processes in the greater society. So understanding this is important particularly in the work that you're doing to end child early enforced marriage is that not only are you working to enable girls to study, that's a practical need, you're fulfilling their basic need to education but there's unequal power relationships in a given society often and not always but often in favor of males so therefore the idea is that gender roles is indicative of unequal power relationships. So that brings me to the question of why is gender equality important after discussing all of this and I wanted to quote Kofi Annan who most of you will know as the previous UN secretary general in 2006 he said it is impossible to realize our goals and I think here he's referring to social economic political goals while discriminating against half the human race. So to support what he said we have research and statistics saying that 70% of the world's poor are women and girls and that basically half the population is restricted or have limited access to resources to better their lives. Community, social economic development will be limited. I think I want to pause at this moment to ask if there are any questions or queries about what I just said so far maybe any clarifications needed if you have any questions please type in the chat box okay we're not receiving any comments or questions in the chat box so I assume we can proceed. In the pre-webinar one of the colleagues raised the issue of gender equity and wanted to hear from us as to the difference between gender equality and gender equity and I think it's important. Gender equity is about being fair to both males and females. Because males and females have different situations as I just explained the different roles in the society, different access to resources, different opportunities, different solutions are needed to compensate for disadvantage. So the idea is that if we're fair to both equity will need to equality that is a relationship and it's the inequality creating the unequal opportunities that we need to rectify that with different measures. As far as gender parity is concerned I want to talk about this in the context of learning and education. If you were home most of you might know the Decar framework for action in 2000. In that particular discussion the international community set some basic goals. The goals for meeting the learning needs of every child, youth and adult by 2015. And though now we are 2016 many of those things are still relevant and valid today. So the two gender related goals from the Decar framework for action are gender equality and gender parity. So gender equality in the context of learning is ensuring that there is educational quality between boys and girls whereas gender parity is about achieving equal participation of girls and boys in all forms of education. And these goals were set in 2000 and now with the sustainable development goals post 2015 era these schools have now been taking a different form but essentially the same goals of gender equality gender parity within the sustainable development goals, goal 4 and 5. So when we talk about achieving parity, talking about achieving equal participation of males and females in learning and education we are arguing that if we do this it will facilitate parity in livelihoods opportunities and also facilitate parity in leadership and decision making so that women and girls and males and females will be at the same decision making table later on. What you are doing in your work to eliminate CFM child early enforced marriage will help to facilitate parity because you are creating environments to enable girls to learn. You are also working to create mechanisms to support livelihoods so that they can be independent and be able to fulfill their human potential so all the things that you are doing relate to gender parity. I wanted to say though that actually I would like to quote the OECD the organization for economic cooperation and development has said that increased female education in developing countries can lead to better health employment outcomes and increase in women's decision making power. So that brings me to Cole's priorities. I wanted to share this with you because I think it's important for us to understand the reason for Cole's approach and why we think women's empowerment and gender equality is so important to us. Cole recognizes that advancing the goals of women's empowerment and gender equality is central to our agenda learning for sustainable development and that's because Cole believes that learning is the key to freedom. It brings empowerment by giving access to learning for individuals we're helping them to make decisions and choices. We're helping increase their ability to act and influence the lives and the decisions that affect them including jobs social inclusion and help them to fulfill their human potential. So learning for us is the key to achieving sustainable development. In terms of gender mainstreaming I just wanted to say that for Cole gender equality and gender mainstreaming is a core part of our organizational culture our values and it's reflected as I will show in a few minutes in all the work that we're doing. So just to give you the definition of gender mainstreaming I think it's important that in your own organizations that in order to define the way that you will approach gender mainstreaming you must have a clear idea of how gender equality fits into your organizational values and the capacities and competencies you have within the organization to be able to do the things you'd like to do with regard to pursuing gender mainstreaming. So for Cole gender mainstreaming is a strategy and a process to ensure that gender equality is an integral part of policies plans and programs. So the idea is that before we take any decision or action we must look at the potential effects of any action on girls, women boys and men before doing so. So gender mainstreaming isn't about women taking action only or not only about women benefiting from it we have a more holistic balanced approach to gender mainstreaming we see that both girls women and boys have their we must take their views, experiences, interests and needs and allow them to shape programs and policies and plans that we implement. And the whole purpose of gender mainstreaming is not to treat boys and men and girls and women equal but the same the idea is to facilitate equal opportunities so that they can have equal outcome that is the idea. Any questions so far at this point regarding Cole's priorities in gender mainstreaming are concept in a way that we have defined it. Again if you have any questions please type it into the chat box and we'll try to address them. Also we encourage you that if you're not speaking if you could please mute your line by pressing on the green button and if you'd like to speak you just need to press on it again so you can unmute your phone and ask your question. So I'm seeing a couple of comments saying that there's no question from the floor. We'll give it another so we have a question asking what type of strategy Cole encourages. Is it a top down or bottom up approach from Mostafa in Bangladesh Open University? Okay I think for us Cole we it really depends on the organization that we are working with and Cole works with a wide range of partners. We work with non-governmental organizations, community groups, farmers, we work with policy makers as well as government officials. So the range of partners is quite vast and diverse and so the approach to gender mainstreaming the way that we see it is really about the partner that we're working with and communities that organizations serve so if we're working with non-governmental organizations community-based groups the approach will be more bottom up and I'll give an example of the BOIS project that I am working on referred to earlier in Jamaica we really looked at the needs of the BOIS we asked the BOIS what are the kinds of learning programs they are interested in and what are the skills that they like to learn we also looked at the labor market to see what kind of job offerings there are we also looked at the community what kind of capacity the community has to develop programs that suit the learning needs of BOIS so that's one example the more policy level or higher level top down as you called it or you're referring to that's how I interpret it is working with government agencies and helping them to mainstream if you will gender considerations into their own plans and policies helping them develop in some cases institutional policies for gender mainstreaming so we're taking a different approach depending on the partner we're working with so I hope that answers your question any other questions at this time okay I'm going to move on so we have time for discussion and this part of the presentation is going to be a little I guess there's a lot of information so I'm not sure I'll be reading all of it but I just wanted to give you a snapshot of what we do with Coal and I think the reason for sharing this with you is that for us at Coal if we really want to speak to gender mainstreaming we really want to be able to promote it with our partners I think the idea is that we need to have our house in order if you will before being able to advance gender equality in the communities that we serve and that's 53 member states we need to ensure that we have enabling mechanisms internally to walk the talk as we say so at Coal we have different policies and practices to ensure that there's gender equality taken into consideration first is for example the way that we recruit staff and consultants the way that we draw contracts the way that staff is assessed in their performance particularly senior management and program staff gender responsiveness is part of that performance assessment we have a harassment discrimination policy and we work very hard to build the capacity of staff in gender awareness and gender mainstreaming in different ways so those are some of the examples of what we're doing to ensure that our policies and practices internally are gender sensitive gender responsive as far as our planning and programming that's where you come in we look at gender equality women's departments part of our mandate and core values as I spoke about we have a gender policy established in 2007 and the way that this policy came about is really in consultation with the 53 member states and this is important because when you're talking about developing a policy in your own communities it will be based on consultation with the communities that you serve that policy has to speak to the work that you're doing and we have a gender action plan we have a policy that sets the priority our policy a priority and our agenda and then we have a gender action plan that helps to make that policy happen it operationalizes the policy we have resources allocated to make that policy happen and we have an internal gender committee made up of a cross section of staff from different departments in senior management that we discuss different issues including training for staff we talk about different we don't really talk that much about programming but it helps to steer the direction in which the organization is going in terms of gender and in 2013 this gender equality manager position was created and the idea is that you know an organization in order to be able to speak to gender mainstreaming to be able to really pursue that you really need to dedicate resources both human and financial resources for gender mainstreaming it was very difficult for that to happen and the last is we do ensure that we are capturing gender related results so we have made sure that we are collecting sex disaggregated data and that we are monitoring and evaluating any gender related results that we set out at the beginning of our programming period and I just wanted to say that you know any learning and feedback that we gain from our monitoring and valuations should go back into the program design later on so the whole idea is to it's a cyclical process as most of you know that are working in the field but I wanted to say also that we talked a lot about coal and our partners facilitating access to learning and training but that is only one part of the picture because you know the learning and education is a tool it's useful it's a resource it's a need that we are working to fulfill to help empower individuals as I said earlier but in order to be able to change the power structure that I talked about earlier that you know gender relations are based on a power dynamic in order to tip the scale if you will and make it more level playing field there are other factors that are required there are other enabling factors and I'll just talk about those which most of you may know particularly those working in communities sociocultural norms are going to be a big factor in affecting whether or not gender mainstreaming is effective legislation as well decision making processes employment opportunities whether those are available so that is more the longer term changes that gender mainstreaming is far into and so that what I wanted to say oh okay before we move on I just wanted to raise a question from the floor can you give an example of gender equality clauses in contracts and this question was raised by Sathir Khan who is the executive director at Bidari in Pakistan thank you for the question we have some standard gender equality clauses where in the consultants contract we will mention that the consultant and the products he or she delivers the deliverables must have a gender lens in practice it is important to it is important to have these clauses but it's also important I think to be able to monitor the effectiveness of these clauses and so that's something we're working on I just gave you a general clause I'll give you a more specific clause that I have used in my own contracts for instance we are asking partner organizations to develop learning materials and we would like those learning materials to be gender responsive and so one of the things I've created a tool it's a checklist for developing gender responsive learning materials and in my contracts I have built in the requirement of the consultant or the contractor to use this checklist to audit the materials that this organization or consultant will develop and ensure that it complies with that checklist so that quality control in terms of gender responses gender responsiveness of learning materials is built into the contract so that's one way of ensuring that that answers your question and I think there's another comment I know Francis wanted to say something Francis would you like to go ahead and say Cherise can you hear me Yes we can hear you Francis thank you Okay I had my struggles here to mute and unmute Yes thank you Cherise I wanted to add to what Roseanne was saying in regard the contracts the question on provision within our contracts but I want to tie it with the previous discussion at the end of the previous slide on the last bullet point data collection monitoring and evaluation in fact the slide is still up within the contract we for instance say specifically that you have to ensure the attendance etc that you do have gender segregated sex segregated data so that is another example of how we make provision for it within the contract but also where we make a reference to specific policies for instance the Canadian policy on child protection in those policies you will see more things coming up in regard to gender but I think that the issue of sex segregated data is a very important issue in order for us to ensure that we follow the gaps if there are gaps within a project and that is why it is so important if you go to for instance the tools that we have developed while this is specifically focused on girls we have some rules that focus on the whole community where men and boys are also involved and so some of the questions in regard to girls is asking specifically about the environment in which the schools are is gender sensitive in other words is there provision for the needs for girls equally as there is provision for the needs of boys this question is not only asked to females it's also asked to the community leaders and in that way we are looking at them on issues that they may be ignorant about so in that way we bring the gender discussion into the center thank you Cherise the other question that I wanted to ask was within this discussion do we not see what the other participants are asking because I cannot see the other questions I thought that I would be able to answer questions of other people also thank you the questions are coming into the moderators screen on go to webinar and as they come in we are addressing them one by one we've just had one come in from Mustafa from Bangladesh Open University asking what about the implementation of the gender policies how it is monitored okay with the gender policy generally the policy is a general direction in which an organization or institution is undertaking it sets out the parameters what would you like to see some of the objectives of the organization with regard to gender equality usually a gender action plan is setting out the timelines for achievement it will set out the expected results of the timelines and responsibilities and when things will be monitored so a gender action plan is one way of ensuring that your policy is being implemented now Cole we have an annual review of the gender action plan we set the indicators and expected results at the beginning of our program period but every year as well we review our gender action plan we set the different expected results program areas of the organization and then at the end of the year when you report to our board of governors we will then go back and see how we've done so it's one way of ensuring that we're accountable and can demonstrate certain results if you're curious the gender action plan is actually available on the Cole website not this year's but last year's perhaps later we can arrange to have the link sent to you so you can see that another further comment on that Francis was wondering if Mustafa referred to the institutional policy that Cole helped develop in Bangladesh Open University Mustafa are you able to address that question yeah actually sometimes we say that the institution has got the policies but in terms of implementation we don't see the results sometimes and so it's later I learned something how to monitor these things so gender action plan can be used to implement as well as to monitor the whole process so thank you very much for your response thank you Mustafa the next comment that we have here is from Rafat Shooja from Bidari in Pakistan the next comment is sometimes when working with girls in community it seems we have to sensitize and mobilize boys more than girls who are well aware of their rights but scared enough to claim it so how do we do so Rafat would you like to expand on your question hello how are we going to hear you okay so I think it's true that only if we focus on girls I think the boys must be involved in the process otherwise sometimes the results are coming very slow so if the boys are involved they would know the benefit of including the girls in the process in the workplace etc so that will inspire them to work today I think it's also important to involve the boys in the process okay thank you Mustafa Rafat did you have any other comments further to that thank you we are working for the the same problem again we are working with the same everywhere but when we are talking about gender parity because we are supposed to take it like that that we have to take them on the same level on the same level so we have to bring them someone down with the luck to play with the society so how to play if you are living in very well the sort of gender parity society but we are having quite a problem so we need some more ideas so I think somewhere we have to teach our boys to behave like a boy and that's it okay thank you very much Rafat I had a comment further to the discussion regarding the institutional policies Frances also had a comment Frances would you like to expand on it okay I'm not sure if Frances can hear us yes I can hear you yes I wanted to respond that all can support institutions or countries to develop gender policies or whatever policies quality assurance policies etc however when it comes to the implementation of the policy unfortunately in that case the owners is on that institution or that country we cannot really get involved into that that is why when we develop such policies we try to put controls in place to ensure that the policy is implemented and that the ownership is there but unfortunately we do not have full control over it because leadership of institutions changes tomorrow there may be another leader or they can be the same leader but they may change their minds so it is a bit of a difficult situation unless it is a specific project where call is asked to support also the implementation phase it is said sometimes for us to see after all the hard work that we have done to develop a policy that the policy is there but it doesn't love it's not a loving document it is just there for the sake of yes we have a policy and this is what we try to avoid with this kind of work of us we encourage gender mainstreaming we advocate for it that is why we bring in webinars such as this and we will go further and we say when an institution doesn't have a policy a gender policy we want to support them to develop such a policy but the policy should be a very practical instrument tool that they can use as Rosanne has said the gender, the checklist that she has developed for looking at materials so it should be something that you can use sometimes the policies are also not user friendly it's a bit above the average user so people don't really know how to use this policy so if policies are less symbolic but more practical tools it may be the direction that we want to suggest thank you thank you very much Frances we'll pass the presentation back to Rosanne to close the presentation I just have one last slide I just wanted to speak to the advocacy and communication part of the gender mainstreaming strategy that we are taking we have various tools to ensure that we are communicating to the world the work that we are doing gender mainstreaming these are some of the areas that you may go and visit women in ICT OEL webpage various resources are there we've got the gender described too and we have connections which it's our quarterly newsletter promoting gender equality just this learning and in all the communications that we have whether it's presentations or publications we always ensure that images are like messages that we share or genders this ends the presentation part of the webinar what I presented just now with Cole is really a snapshot of the tools that we are using to ensure that the work that we do is gender responsive I've talked about policies, practices, plans, programs and advocacy and communication and that's the presentation part I'd like to move to the discussion part of this webinar and hear from your experiences the challenges, the lessons learned or any practical ways that you to mainstream gender in your own work can I open the floor to any comments again please feel free to type in your comments or questions in the chat box one by one alternatively please feel free to unmute your phone and try to speak so that we can hear you so maybe I can ask to just jump start the discussion perhaps I can ask one of you as to what you're doing to mainstream gender in the work so may I call upon Safir from Badari is there something that you'll be able to share in the work you're doing to mainstream gender from anyone else any of the comments from anyone else on the work that you're doing I know that you're doing work in the communities and some of you have raised some of the challenges that you've found perhaps that's the kind of thing that we'd like to hear and discuss from you Safir I'm not sure if you're able to hear as if you are please feel free to unmute your phone and speak I also know that we have Vanita from Mandashi from India if there are any ways that you mainstream gender in your process and in your projects feel free to share that with us as well we also have Mrs Hassan Banu from center of mass education and science in Bangladesh Mrs Banu please feel free to share what it is your organization does in terms of ensuring that girls and boys have equal opportunities and that gender is mainstream throughout your processes and projects Cheriz can I speak Yes Francis please go ahead because I cannot see if there are questions coming in so I will take the floor for the moment just to thank everybody who have participated in this webinar and I know one is also comfortable to speak on these sessions but I want to encourage the participants who have joined us this evening to feel free and share their experiences you're in Mozambique today I said to some of the partners that I've worked with although they think that they learn a lot from me they must know that we learn a tremendous lot from them and it's very important that they are open and share with us so don't think what you have done is insignificant it is indeed huge and we can learn from you in other countries and other partners can learn from you I know all of you are doing a great job so kindly share with us thank you Cheriz Thank you Francis I see that we had a comment from Saphir and Bidari that there's something wrong with the microphone unfortunately that Saphir if there are any comments that you'd like to share here please do so and I can read it out for you alternatively we encourage everybody to log back into the community of practice after this webinar and post their comments there in the discussion so we can continue this conversation in the meantime I have a comment from Vanita Shinde from Mandashi who is the Chief Administrative Officer from Mandashi Organization she says hello we work for women our mission is empowerment 90% of staff is women we do not have gender policies at our organization but good to know about gender equality and she spends her thanks to everybody so thank you very much Vanita for sharing Saphir would you like to go ahead Hi Vanita Hi very much for your comment is there anything that you'd like to ask no thank you thanks would you like to try it there you go thank you very much Saphir sorry about that I think it was muted and I was trying to say something that nobody could hear me I don't want to go into a long discussion just a few quick points interesting points that I can share we have a gender policy and we try our best to implement it we are an organization that is focused on women and girls gender mainstreaming is part of everything that we do that's actually the objective of the organization itself that's why the Dari was created the challenges the I think the biggest challenge is the availability of the resources you can make very good policies but when it comes to implementing them then you are stuck with whether you have enough money to do that or not so I think that is usually the biggest challenge though there are other challenges like when you go out into the community these gender biases this gender discrimination is so it's so it has become part of the culture so changing it and doing things differently becomes really really difficult when you try to do it especially when you go into the communities and you try to like we go out into the community and we want to talk to women we first have to face men and get their permission to get access to their women that's how the situation is this is kind of a lesson learned as well that you have to engage men and boys as well because if you don't engage them you can't access women and you can't change gender roles or improve things or change this the term somebody used just a few minutes ago this power equation the power equation between the two genders this needs to be set right and you need to work with both genders to set things right thank you so much yeah thank you so much for that comment and I appreciate it I think you've highlighted a very important point about the involvement of community leaders and men to be able to implement gender mainstream or to look at these issues it's very key and much of the research has shown us that the involvement of men and boys is crucial it will be really serious about the pursuit of gender mainstream and gender equality and I myself cannot speak about the biases that you're talking about but from what you're describing sounds to me that these biases are deep set and very difficult to address and it takes time to change and to work within this kind of environment thank you Safira and Ruzan I see Mavish from Bidari I see that you've got your hand raised would you like to say something Mavish hello hi Mavish so do you have any suggestions I just wanted to know the role of the gender community sorry Mavish can you repeat that please there's a bit of noise in the background I said I raised it earlier during the presentation I just wanted to know if the gender community is involved oh okay our internal gender committee at Coal he is a committee headed by the president of the senior management so our president and vice president sit on that committee along with myself and staff members from a cross section of the organization so we have representation at all levels so we have administrative staff program of senior staff colleagues with different functions we have colleagues from knowledge management and resource and finance as well as from programs so the idea is really that the committee is a tool not only to ensure that our gender policy is implemented because it oversees the implementation of the gender action plan it is responsible for guiding the capacity building of staff at Coal in gender mainstreaming but also it provides a tool with which to raise awareness among staff because as I just mentioned we have staff from different parts of the organization who normally may not be as involved in the program but they become aware and become sensitized through participation in this committee so it's really a very powerful tool and I highly encourage something like that it's feasible within your institutions to have who then answers your question okay our hour is coming to a close we have one more comment from Venita from Mendashi Venita would you like to read out the comment regarding your work with communities and women yes yeah so while working with women and while mobilizing them we also face challenges like women do not get family support they do not family do not allow women to participate in the program workshop so first we try to convince the family and once family understand the importance of the program then they allow the women to participate in the workshop so challenging the women to participating in the workshop and also their family so we face challenge convincing the women and the family to participate in the program is most challenging for us also but we also saw once women is successful then family start to support her thanks a lot Venita I just thought maybe could I just please ask a question about the way that you what kind of what kind of tools maybe you can tell us what kind of tools or approaches have you used to convince the family for women to participate have you used success stories or what kind of tools have you used to convince I'm just curious about that yeah like success stories of previous graduates that works a lot and that helps a lot what we do we also organize meeting in the villages we try to first we try to contact SAG leaders community leaders and with the help of them we try to reach the women excellent thank you for that thank you for sharing that I think it's helpful for other colleagues as well thank you Venita and Rizan we'll take one more comment from the floor and then I'll invite Frances Ferraro to make the closing remarks I believe Mustafa you put in a comment here would you like to expand on this okay I'm not sure if Mustafa can hear us but I'll just read out the comment here he said sorry go ahead yeah so okay thank you I think actually the main problem happens is if there is a policy somewhat the policy is partially implemented or some in some places the policies are not cared for I think that the most important thing is if we have the role model from different gender perspectives like if at an institution we have some role models some female leaders or whatever it is so if the role models are there this will impact the whole community or society very much this is very important because whatever policy we take and the implementation is always slow so if there is some role models that they can just create an impact to the society so that other people can follow them I think that will work better thank you very much thank you very much Mustafa and I see Fatima from SPART the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child in Pakistan would also like to say something please go ahead Fatima yes we can hear you hi everybody this is my first webinar I've replaced Mariam previously who used to be the focal person from SPART I am just wanting to share a success story and a bit of a background to this success story in 2000 SPART actually drafted a bill for the protection of breastfeeding and it wasn't just for breastfeeding the draft that was the bill that was drafted by SPART it was for women protection in the office spaces but in Pakistan due to culture pressure and the other suppressing matters the initial bill which was drafted for women protection in office spaces was not taken up so seriously as it was when it was correlated with child nutrition and protection of child for that matter and linking the two so that bill got later on passed on by an ordinance and now it's the prevailing law in Pakistan but in Pakistan if you're talking about women the women's rights are more valued when in correlation with children's rights thank you thank you very much Fatima that's great I know we also have some colleagues from the Center for Mass Education and Science in Bangladesh we have Anika Tasneem we have Shariar and we also have Mrs. Bhanu Hassan Bhanu Executive Director would any of you like to say something Hello Cheris can I share Hi Vanita, yes As per our experience it is very important to make women famous this helps indirectly in marketing her product for this we honor women in big ceremonies we also publish successful enterprise stories in newspapers we broadcast their stories through radio channel local TV channel it helps women to increase her self confidence also her respect in the community and family level that's great thank you so much Vanita we hope that other colleagues from different organizations can also learn from everybody's experiences today that they've shared I'll give it a few more minutes I'm not sure if the technology from the office at CMES the Center for Mass Education and Science is working in Bangladesh I'll give it a few more moments and then we'll hand it over to Francis to make the closing remarks okay Francis would you like to go ahead to make the closing remarks Thank you Cheris Thank you everybody first of all a big thanks to to you the participants without whom this webinar wouldn't have been possible thank you we have had more than 20 people registering for coming on tonight but unfortunately some people did not log in so thank you so much for honoring your commitment then thank you so much Cheris for setting this all up and for facilitating it you've done a great job and most importantly Roseanne for being our very gracious hostess in hosting this presentation I hope we can make use of your services again next time I think you've done a great job I wanted to say I know CMES is Vanu and the team they are online but they didn't speak maybe because of technology they do have a gender policy and I would have wanted them maybe at the next time on the discussion to share with us how did it happen that they develop the policy to share with us the process of the gender policy it's a fear I said sometimes we don't have policies but we have the commitment and we do it but there are other institutions where if there's not a policy nothing will happen sometimes we have to try both I want to congratulate Mandeshi for broadcasting and publishing women and I think the other organizations are doing the same but as Mustafa has said we need role models and I think Mandeshi has put it clear that they are using success stories when Roseanne asked what tools they are using to convince the communities to allow girls and women to get educated I think one of the tools is indeed the role model model that you put that women out there and say they have achieved this success or that success and that they in that way inspire other women and that is why we are using girls inspire so that what the girl achieved will show will serve as an inspiration to other girls Spark has done a great job as was narrated to us on the policy that they have initiated in Pakistan and as I said some of the other organizations that's online have done all great work and didn't all have the opportunity now to share it or maybe because of technology but I'm very excited about the discussion that just took place for us to talk about these issues one way of convincing boys and men is to engage them to involve them to ask them what do they think how do they feel earlier in the discussion Mustafa also asked is it a top down or a bottom up approach which we are using and Roseanne eloquently responded by saying we are using like a participatory approach it depends on where we are at what level we are working and this is what we are doing also with girls inspire we are using a participatory approach looking at any level whether it's at management level at the community folk level or at the grassroots level we have to respect the next person to have the same rights than what we have and that input is as valuable as ours and that is why it's so important that you share with us your stories and great stories were shared with us tonight and I'm very very happy about this webinar I'm looking forward to the next one thank you so much for sharing your passion with us in this we are looking forward to the next webinar thank you and good night good night good night everyone good night good night thank you