 been brought to you by Macorra Limited and the Land Fortress Foundation. My name is Chris Tanner, I'm a principal consultant at Macorra and it is my pleasure to be the moderator for this webinar. I have a lifelong interest in Indigenous and customary land tenure systems and livelihood strategies and the land rights of women is of course a key element in this wider picture. In a moment I'm going to invite my colleague Liz Dey to tell you more about the work she's been leading in this area for the past five years but what I want to emphasise from the start is a remarkable impact that this project has had in a relatively short time. You will see today how investing in a diverse group of gender and land champions both women and men selected by their community can be a game changer not only for women but for the wider community as well. We hope that our discussion will lead you with an understanding of how this methodology works and how it could be applied more widely. Now please let me introduce our panelist. Elizabeth or Liz Dey is also a principal consultant at Macorra and leads our Women's Land Tenure Security or WALS project. Liz has written and presented widely on gender and land, women's land rights, land tenure and social change. She also currently serves as a board member of the Land Portal Foundation. Narangarel Nara Jansanja is executive director and the founding member of the Mongolian NGO People Centered Conservation PCC and a senior team member of the WALS project. She has worked in participatory rule development and community-based natural resource management since 2003. Joyce Indakaru is the gender and mining officer for Haki Medini which is an NGO based in Tanzania. Joyce is also a senior member of the WALS project and has played a central role in the WALS participatory research and champions training initiative. Also on our panel to bring in a global perspective is Michael Taylor. Mike is director of the International Land Coalition ILC, a global alliance strongly promotes land rights and People Centered Land Governance as fundamental to building a more just and sustainable world. You, the audience, are of course warmly invited to participate as well. We will start with a panelist dialogue and then open the webinar for a Q&A session. If you have questions please post them using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Please do not use a chat box for that purpose. We will try to answer as many questions as we can. If we don't address your point someone from the team will endeavor to get back to you later. We will also aim to reflect your questions and comments in our post webinar right up. Please also note that a report containing the key findings of this project is also available. We will share the details as well as the recording of this webinar on the land bottle's website and on the Makora website. For those who tweet please join in. You should be seeing a slideshow now with suggested Twitter handles and hashtags. So let's get and show on the road. Liz, may I ask you first to begin telling us a little about the way the project was structured and how it evolved. So over to you. Thanks very much Chris. Good to be here with everyone today. So let me start with what is Waltz? It's a strategic long-term action research project that aims to support improved gender equity in land tenure governance. We use the acronym Waltz for Women's Land Tenure Security but I want to emphasize that the main focus of the project is actually on improving gender equity more broadly within land tenure governance at local levels. So in other words we're sitting to strengthen and protect land rights for women and vulnerable groups but within the wider context in a way that's win-win for the whole community rather than either or. For this reason we've been committed from the outset to taking a long-term and highly participatory approach in our work, building local relationships and capacity in a way that includes the whole community. So stage one of Waltz began as far back as October 2015. We teamed up with our partners PCC in Mongolia and Haki Madini in Tanzania and we selected four pilot communities to start working in all of them pastoralist communities and all in mining affected areas of those two countries. So the initial research we did at community level involved baseline surveys, participatory fieldwork and then an in-depth process of results validation through community feedback meetings and a national stakeholder workshop. The aim at this point firstly was to gain a solid understanding of key local issues around land, natural resources and gender, of course all in the wider context of pressures from land grabbing and climate change and then second we wanted to see how we might continue working with the communities in order to support them in finding solutions to what had emerged to them as the most pressing issues in their local areas. So we secured solid buy-in from the local governments and communities who we found very supportive of our consultative and community-led approach and we began a stage two in early 2018. So stage two this involved a detailed participatory process firstly to select locally respected men and women who were willing to become trained champions for land rights and gender equity in their communities. Our champions come from diverse backgrounds they include ordinary community members, traditional leaders, women and men of all ages, all income groups, all education levels and the champions took part in an inclusive, iterative and participatory training program which we rolled out in two rounds with the men and women taking part jointly and equally. So round one took place in 2018 and 2019, in four communities round two kicked off at the beginning of 2020 in two communities and in round two the first group of champions participated as mentors with the new cohort and had nominated the new cohort to start. So the focus and goal of the training was raising awareness of land and gender related laws so as to empower the men and women in the communities to share their knowledge and work with their fellow community members and leaders to strengthen gender equity. So just briefly what we did we had a replicable format across all the communities but we tailored the content according to the local issues. Our team worked really hard to create safe and mutually supportive spaces for our champions to grow in confidence both individually and as a group and this confidence building element was a really key element of our whole process. We had a lot of vigorous group discussions, we used role play techniques a lot, we had gender segregated sessions and we had joint sessions, plenaries, small group discussions, a whole range of participatory techniques in there and we took a stepped approach to the training as well allowing ideas to germinate and bubble up organically. We've just published a report today of our main findings as well so you'll find a lot more details in there of that some of the things we're covering today. I just quickly highlight two headline results from our experience. So first off on the slide in front of you as you see one of our key results is that we've seen a significant increase in women's participation in community decision-making on land in really a relatively short time when dealing with the land sector just over five years and this has taken three forms. Women champions have been increasingly confident in speaking up in meetings, they've become more willing to contest elections and take up local leadership positions and very importantly we've seen our men champions strongly supporting their fellow women in these roles particularly in Tanzania with the traditional leaders there and then the second headline result just to highlight is that we found investing in women's land rights also protects community land rights so really we found it is a win-win and it's not an either-or and as a result of the world's training our champions are now working with their local governments to help solve land disputes to better protect their communities, land and natural resources as my colleagues will be able to share with you more today. Thanks Chris. That's great Liz thank you very very much. Let me pick up right from that and ask Joyce to elaborate a little on how the world's champions training program in Tanzania has affected community participation in decision-making. Joyce over to you please. Thank you very much Chris. I would like to share a few examples from Tanzania on how world's project has actually impacted community decision-making and on this one I would at least share two examples. One of the issues that came about in terms of community decision-making for world's project in Tanzania is women in the two project communities taking more active role in community decision-making. On the initial stages of this project in both communities in Tanzania women wouldn't talk anything when they come to the class they wouldn't contribute they wouldn't even raise up their hands whether they heard the concerns that women would actually participate or say or speak up they were not really saying things it is because the culture or the customs and traditional democracy communities have nurtured women not to argue or to speak in front of men. So when we continue building the capacity through the legal awareness confidence building these women start to be active they start to contribute a lot in the meetings and as we talk today they are more far confident and they can really contribute a lot in the meeting they cannot really let anything go without their concerns without ideas held in the meetings. And secondly male Maasai elders are encouraging women to take part in debates and in decision-making in the community in the Maasai communities especially the two and that world project was actually operating men are the only people who make decisions over everything so whether women issues were taken out or not but men were the only people who ever made the decisions over everything in Maasai communities. So as we continue building this capacity as we continue to train these people as we started to cut a lot of issues from the laws like what the law says when it comes to governing or managing the natural resources including land that there is a need for women also to be part of it that's when these men start to transform themselves from believing that they are the only one who are to make the decision into actually engaging women and so women again you know gain their confidence start to be speaking because even men especially traditional leaders started to actually encourage them a lot to speak in the meeting. Thank you Chris. That's great Joyce and that's really wonderful to hear that story of yours. Now let's turn to Mongolia. Nara how does improving women's land rights protect community land rights in your part of the world? Thank you Chris happy to share also some more experiences in Mongolia. In two communities in Mongolia the gender and law training helped the people to feel more confident when they're negotiating with the mining companies for example last year the communities with led by our champions who participated in the world's training program could update the agreement with the local mining company and plus female champion with her community could stop new mining activities in her area so having said that the champions knowledge of law helps them to deal with the investors and also land officials because often these land officials and also investors use a very complex and theoretical language which is very hard for local people to understand so now local people understand and they know what is happening in there and then the whole process and also give chance in that case you know like to exercise their rights. Last but not least the communities also support the communities champions also support the communities by working with the local government in participatory and gender-equitable way. For example some of the local governors told us that the champions reminded them to consider gender issues when they develop when the local government develop new regulations and planning the local level. Thank you very much Chris and that's it come in from now. Thank you. Thank you both very very much. Nara enjoys two really informative accounts from very very different geographical and cultural contexts that give us a very clear idea of what once has achieved and it all sounds very exciting. We'd like to hear now from Mike. Mike would you like to say something please about how these experiences in decision making and empowerment of champions reflect what you have seen in other countries? Do you have any reactions for these walls findings so far? Thank you Chris and a big congratulations to you to Liz to your colleagues in Mongolia and Tanzania. It's very very interesting and I would like to just say a few words why I think your project over the last five years and it's very it's very good of you to take the time to tie it up and present it to us in such an understandable manner is so significant for our network and I think beyond our network and the ways in which it resonates with what we hear from our members. Maybe just taking a couple steps back and giving a bit of context which I think helps explain the significance of your work. We really at this point in time have a very urgent need to upscale the recognition of community land rights. We have for the first time land rights goals that are globally adhered to and sustainable development goals but no countries are reporting them on them and in fact we have very little evidence that we're moving towards the land targets in the SDGs and so we have a situation where we estimate that roughly 50 percent of the land surface of the earth is claimed by local communities as belonging to them. Through custom and tradition but only 20 percent of these claims are actually recognized by their governments so that gap between the 10 percent of the land surface of the earth which is recognized in the 50 percent which is claimed is a massive, massive gap in vulnerability and gives a very immediate idea of the task we have ahead to scale up and to scale up urgently because as we know there's increasing demands and pressures on land and natural resources and so the challenge we have in scaling up is how do we scale up in a way which overcomes the risks that in securing community land rights we don't further disadvantage those members of the communities that are already disadvantaged and obviously women are the biggest group there but the same can apply also to various minority groups particularly Indigenous peoples where they may live on the margins of more dominant ethnic settlements and that's what's so interesting and exciting about your work is that it shows us that it is possible to do that. It is possible to think about scaling up from the bottom up because if we scale up without doing it from the bottom up then we can do more damage than good and so the idea of local champions and I think what's amazing is the stories we've just heard have talked about how local champions really are building democracy from below. If you ask our network what their work is about many of them will tell you really at the fundamental at the basis it's about building democracy at the local level it's about enabling the women the men the young people in communities to be deciding about their own future and we know that that starts with land rights because when you have secure land rights you have a position in which to often choose look at future options and decide what's best. So I'd just like to throw out three reasons in particular from the perspective of the work of IOC members why your local champions approach is so significant. I think the first is one of sustainability so you're not ignoring tensions that exist at the community level but you're facing those head on and you've managed to facilitate processes whereby opposing perspectives and tensions on women's land rights within the community can actually be dealt with can be addressed for what they are can be dealt with and through that winning champions that are not women themselves I think that's a fantastic part of your story and it reminds me of the work that one of our members Transparency International has been doing in Ghana with training women to use video to expose corruption by traditional leaders in the communities in land allocations and by bringing evidence of wrong practices within the communities women are able to bring that out into the open have it discussed have it dealt with and move on from that. The second is that it's also very clear from what you said that it strengthens the whole community so it's about equal rights for women but it shows that equal rights for women is beneficial to everybody not only women so it's about enhancing the capacity of women to defend everybody's land rights to defend the whole community's land rights and our member Ukobak in Uganda has been able to share similar stories where of a similar of an approach whereby women's land rights has very clearly had an impact on the whole community because women have become very active in policy dialogue engaging with government officials for the benefit of the community as a whole and not just women and then thirdly women's land rights is one step in overcoming wider discrimination against women. Our members of IOC work for women women's land rights in the context of working for for across the board respects for the rights of a woman and I think emerging nurturing the emergence of strong women leadership and the recognition by leaders by male leaders and women leaders that this is good for everybody really has a long term impact on many aspects of gender equality at the local level and work by one of our members Stroker in Nicaragua on women's empowerment and recognition that started with land but then spread through to economic activities and many other aspects showed how powerful that is just as you have with your work. So just in conclusion and coming back to the scaling up idea because I think I think this is this is really where our future challenge and opportunity from what you shared lies is this is this is what we need to think about how we can do now is take what you've managed to show in Mongolia and Tanzania and think how that can be not just replicated because replication often doesn't work you know in the land sector but adapted and rebuilt into different contexts in ways that it can work in with communities in other areas as well. Our members have partnerships in more than 40 countries for what they call people-centered land governance so building bringing community members, government officials, NGO supporters together to build a people-centered approach to how land should be governed. Women's land rights is absolutely central to that and I think what you've the methodology that you've shown and we've shared with us today can very much inform this kind of work and we'd be we'd be really interested in seeing how we can take some of the learning from this and feed it back into those platforms that are prioritizing women's land rights. So thank you so much all the best to you and we look forward to hopefully working together with you in the next steps. Bye. Thank you very much Mike for those really excellent comments and also for bringing material from other countries which is very useful. One thing you said particularly struck me your point about building democracy from below I think that's really essential and the numbers about the percentage of the planet that is actually changed by indigenous communities and local communities whose land rights still not yet recognized and this is a fundamental overall challenge and I think the interesting aspect of Walt is that it shows that this approach can actually address that particular issue as well without necessarily undermining the the rights of women and other people within the communities quite the opposite. I think your story again about the video addressing corruption in male leaders is a salient point in that context. So once again thank you so much. Thank you very much indeed. Now let's move on now and dig into some more of the Walt's team's key findings and takeaways. Firstly back to Liz have you been able to measure the increase in knowledge and awareness of key land and gender-related laws among the women and men champions that you've been working with? Yeah indeed we have Chris so we've got a graph coming up on screen now here just overall across all four communities we found a 50% increase in levels of legal awareness after the training. So what we're showing in the graph is the different surveys that we did to try and assess that. We asked all the champions a set of five questions to test their knowledge of the relevant land and gender-related law. Survey one which is the pale blue one that took place just before they started the Walt's training. Survey two which is shown in the dark blue where you see the big jump up there on all five questions that took place immediately after completing the training and then survey three which is in orange that was with the original cohort of champions only so those trained in four communities in round one and that took place approximately one year after they completed the training. So there's a clear upward trend there across the board and we've just compared it in that graph as well to our community level baseline that we did in our earlier research. I'd also say comparing by gender the overall increase in legal awareness among women champions is 62% and among men it's 37% so we definitely saw a big improvement there for women across the board. Chris just briefly I'd also like to highlight another of our key headlines if I may. This is our finding that training men and women champions in land and gender has had a ripple effect on broader social norm change so this includes changes in attitudes and behavior around gender-based violence as well as topics around economic empowerment and this has actually been the icing on the cake for us as a project team because the changes we've seen have been coming up from the champions themselves so let me just quickly explain what I mean. When we started the training program right in the very opening session we used an icebreaker exercise to get champions thinking about gender concepts in very practical ways and then in all the training sessions whether we were focused on land laws, investment laws, mining related issues, our team wove discussion of gender concepts and issues throughout but we still weren't really sure how directly we would actually be able to approach and discuss some of the very sensitive issues around gender-based violence that had come up through the communities in our stage one research. We wanted to make sure we were being led on that by the champions and you know not coming in as outsiders effectively you know talking about these sensitive issues and what we actually found is through the role plays particularly in the early sessions that issues around gender-based violence began to be raised more openly by the champions themselves so and and that was coming from the men as well as the women and particularly in the context of discussion around land and mining disputes and around household and public decision-making. So based on that we were able to then introduce more focused content and resources on gender-based violence and this actually contributed to our champions resolving to make certain changes and to take certain actions across their communities which I know my colleagues will be able to give you examples about that. Thanks Chris. Thank you. This really does sound impressive all the way through and indeed let's now turn to our other colleagues to to get some more detail. We know that gender-based violence is a serious problem everywhere and it's good for all of us to hear of an approach that can impact on this very difficult and painful issue. So let's turn to Joyce. Would you like to share with us please how the Waltz program has impacted on gender-based violence in Tanzania? Over to you Joyce. Absolutely Chris. Thank you Chris. There are so many examples of how Waltz has actually helped to reduce gender-based violence in the two project communities but I will at least highlight a few ones and one of the good things that we have seen in terms of reducing gender-based violence in the two project communities is the issue of men supporting their female family members to want to get a piece of land that they own for themselves. Look at this one in these two project communities every valuable resource that means the land or the cows all of them belongs to men in these communities and even surprisingly women also are also people who are owned by men like I could say they are also properties owned by men so you can imagine if a woman is also considered as a valuable resource owned by men there is no way that you can give a property to own a property so it's not given woman a property which is land both of these are actually properties. So when we start to build the capacities on these people and actually define what gender-based violence is all about what are the consequences if all these are lived unsolved and dealt with and how can we make a healthy community and these people start to understand this is ending up nodding their heads understanding that involving having women to own also land is actually a good thing and that is actually making them a healthy community we all know that land is actually everything you know like life depend on land so this men start to encourage a female to get the land plus that even some of the champions were able to give the family owned land to some of their female members but another interesting example is actually young men taking up more of domestic duties in the in these communities there are roles and responsibilities that the community has assigned it to be implemented by a certain sex like issues like cooking maybe washing or fetching water or collecting milk all those are considered traditionally in these project communities to be women's roles and if a man is actually found doing one of those or those responsibilities people may question like what's wrong with this man because it's a shame in men doing women's roles but as we continue to teach these people to build the capacity to create awareness through legal these people start to transform and they start to understand that supporting their female their wives in the family there is nothing wrong about it it does not change them from being men but they are men who actually love and care and the last example on this one is women now sit on the chairs in the meetings rather than standing up or sitting on the floor listen to this one I am a Marci woman so I know what I'm talking about in the project communities when we were just starting we found all the women we have given away their chairs to men when even if they are the first one who reported in the venue where the meeting is taking place where the training is taking place every time a man gets in a woman has to give a chair to a man and that is in the Marci communities is a must to do because it is being done by the name of respect that's what the community believe like giving away a chair to a man is actually a respect so when we also continue to talk to these people to teach them to create awareness through the legal training talking to them about what are the gender-based violence issues they transform themselves and start also to to give the young men now giving all the women the chairs so it became vice versa not everybody but good examples can be seen in these communities thank you Chris back to you that's that's great George thank you very much indeed I think an example such as that about the chair is it just captures so much about the changes that are taking place thanks in in in a large part to the vaults methodology and the project itself that you've been implementing intent in here let's turn now perhaps to to Mongolia Nora have you seen a similar thing happening in Mongolia as a result of your work there through the vaults project thank you Chris yes happy to share some more experiences from Mongolia so in Mongolia participants of the vaults training now actively promoting services for women affected by gender-based violence for example one maize champion made a big size of posture of phone numbers in case of GBV and hang it in the community hall because he and other community members member notice members notice that you know they often this small size of postures are hesitant the woman hesitant to approach this small size of posture because you know like they always afraid that they can be noticed or seen by others because it's such a sensitive issue of course so but the big posture hanging in the wall now can be seen by everyone and without being noticed by other members of the community so these kind of small but you know the potential to bring high impacts in the local areas interventions are initiated by the champions themselves so yeah by the way the big posture man is actually paid from his pocket to make this big posture so also another thing I want to share here is more awareness on different types of GBV including the vulnerable men issuing Mongolia you know when we start the training program some of the female champions shared that you know they didn't know that the the violence there is other type of violence they thought that only physical violence considered the real violence for them but they said we now know that there is economic violence and other violence that the mental abuse is also considered the big violence type of issue so PCC members including myself have written several blocks on this issue for the last couple of years and yeah there was a bad issue is a big issue a big gender issue in Mongolia and lastly yeah regarding the household chores like Joyce shared it also similar experiences also observed in Mongolia but traditionally Mongolian men do some household activities at home but more and more young many you know they really try hard to help their wives for example there are several young male champions who are some of them also married during the training program and they share it that they really try hard you know that to do cleaning washing taking care about the young kids and even the milk houses needed so they influence the young generation young people in their area also so thank you very much Chris over to you thank you Laura let's now turn to the issue of economic empowerment and ask how waltz has contributed to a greater understanding of women's land rights and gender equity in this context firstly Joyce could you please tell us how waltz has achieved what appears to be significant changes in the Tanzanian communities that have been supported by this project in terms of the economic empowerment of women thank you again Chris um yeah uh I have a few examples to share on this one um one is actually an increasingly confidence among women to at least negotiate better on the prices for the minerals that women use to sell in both of these communities from Tanzania because there are um there are mining activities taking place in their communities women and other vulnerable groups in the community including poor men or people with disability used to go used to go to their mindsites and collected leftovers minerals and when they collect if they get some they have to sell to go and sell to their traders or to the buyers of the minerals so in the beginning uh women couldn't really negotiate very well and those buyers were the one who are actually planning for their prices and women couldn't even argue on that because again they are not yet to not really argue so much uh with men but when we continue to build the capacity when we train with these community champions on liberal awareness uh um confidence building and public speaking skills women start to have a confidence to be able to negotiate better for better prices and even they are getting very good support from their husband and something else that I want to share is actually women now are investing in their own land remember I said about that men have started to uh make sure that their family their female family members get a piece of land and so this women who have been able to get a land either through legal procedures or even from the family now have started to invest in those lands actually by growing the produce for sale but also there is an increase of women understanding uh to understand or to recognize that there is a need actually to have an independent income for them for the reason of actually finding the equality but also to reduce the dependency of women to men back to you Chris thank you very much that's that's that's great Joyce thank you very much um now perhaps following on from what Joyce has just been saying and and again looking at to looking at waltz and how it's contributed to relations for example between the communities and other stakeholders like the mining companies that have had such a huge impact on their lives particularly in your area would you like to say more about economic components in this wider context perhaps thank you Chris uh again very delighted to share uh more stories from mongolia uh like in other post-war areas the world mongolian uh herders are pretty much tightly their their livelihoods especially uh pretty much a tie connected with their pasture land so more and more her to communities have confidence to stand up against mining company to protect the grassland so for example two years ago waltz trained female champion together with her communities caught the mining new mining activities in their area and drilling and trucks are drilling and you know like uh digging down in the most nutritious art of their pasture land area so she and her community members uh approached to these mining guys and calmly asked them to show all the necessary documents uh they have for the permission to do the permission mining activities in their area and also same time she rang to the uh flock of officials including some go the some governor and land officer and the environmental officer also and to do some investigation they came this the local uh authorities came and they did some investigation shortly after that this they uh the mining company stopped their activities in the area so later when we were having uh one say one of the session uh the training program she also she shared that they could have not done it or if they didn't know uh how to ask right questions what to ask and uh from this mining from those mining guys and the right the right steps to be taken so thank you Chris how was to you thank you uh again nara that's that's a really good story um that really are the lines of knowing what to ask and what to do next is a big part of defending your rights and I think in this context the like the legal empowerment and the legal education that comes through with the waltz program is is particularly important now um let's turn to the the key question perhaps of whether waltz the waltz experience the waltz approach has potential that can be scaled up within each country and can serve as a useful model for other countries facing similar issues um let's turn to nara first and ask her to kick off this part of our discussion nara could you say something please about how waltz has influenced policy and government initiatives at that national level in in mongolia absolutely chris yeah we see very big potential for this approach in mongolia mongolian government has included uh participatory and gender equitable principles of waltz training program within the national uh guideline on landscape planning for local government and it clearly shows that waltz approach has huge potential you know to produce much wider impacts on women's land right beyond the communities we have worked under the project and we work on this we work very closely with the with national government and here is the guideline that is included in this guideline and uh it's uh available online and also the printed copy of this this uh distributed and sent to all of provincial levels from those land officers yeah thank you so much and it's obviously you know like contributing to improve the land penal governance at the national level but that's really good to see thank thank thank you thank you nara for that um it's really refreshing out to say to see a national government take notice of this kind of project and to um really seriously integrate the findings into its um its new literature uh for for a wide wide range of stakeholders um turning now to tanzania perhaps um Joyce would you like to say something about um how the the waltz champion's approach has been uh used or or is is being requested in other parts of tanzania absolutely chris uh yes it's very important to actually continue use this approach and uh look at this one many in many other communities where hakimadine is actually working in tanzania actually especially those communities affected by mining activities have been requesting for the replication of that particular in their communities look at this one the most people affected when it comes to uh land rights are women and at the same time women are not actually included in decision making when it comes to that is located for new users we all know that if they are not included actually their exclusion at the end of the day makes them to lose the access and use of that particular land the land that they have been um collecting firewood from they have been getting water from getting uh forestry products maybe grazing on it or maybe even contacting a subsistence farming so when they lose that particular land at the end of the day these women are forced to find an alternative and an alternative in many cases might be a problem or might accept a better problem because one of the of the issues is actually women are forced to work long distances to find those places elsewhere as they do that they may even again face very dangerous environment like sexual violence maybe or even rape or being attacked by dangerous animals therefore my suggestion would be I'll be so happy to see this uh world's uh approach being replicated elsewhere especially to communities facing the same challenges because of the very vivid live examples from worlds in the other communities that this intervention has already taken place thank you Chris back to you that's that's great thank thank you guys very much for that all these detailed insights I think they really give a flavor of the the impact of the project in these two very different parts of the world um the the the issue of gender relations and changing gender relations being at the center of the overall question um let's look now again at the the question of takeaways from this approach and turn back to Liz um what are your thoughts on expanding the world's approach through to other places please um yeah thanks Chris so just briefly I think I can just make three points here um so first of all in the areas where we've been working we actually think that um amplifying what we've done in those neighboring areas would be relatively straightforward particularly by building on the mentoring process that we've been developing over the last year in particular um further afield we found that the baseline participatory research that we did uh was very important for laying ground work building that community engagement understanding the issues um and doing that you know with solid local partners um as well and then more widely um we do feel that uh the approach has potential for wider applications and we're going to we're in the process of continuing our learnings around that and having the opportunity to have this webinar and hear from so many other stakeholders in the sector on that today is really important part of that for us thanks thanks thanks Liz um and again thank you to the whole world's team for sharing what the project has achieved and its potential as a model for addressing not just women's land rights but whole range of other of other social questions I think once again it underlines the fact that if you if you change the customary gender relations between men and women it impacts our whole range of other different issues different behaviors and so on things so lots of things change as a result changing that fundamental equation between men and women um it's now time for our question and answer session but before we start please note that we're asking all participants to complete a brief survey before you leave the webinar if you'd have to leave early I still want to ask a question please do so you can do this by typing it into the q and a box where it'll be noted and addressed later by the team or you can include it in your response to the survey we've included the link in the chat now my colleague Casey is directing questions to me so I'm going to have a look up a chat box and see what's coming through um Casey says let's start with a question that we've heard from several participants that is we've seen a lot of cases where communities come together for a development project and then once the project leaves cultural norms can revert back to traditional ways how do you guarantee sustainability after the project ends I think that's a really excellent question it applies to many development projects across the board but I think it's a really excellent question in this context so which one of you would like to kick off on an answer for that maybe this is the question sure um yeah I can jump in on that Chris um yeah there's a few I mean that's a great question and you know obviously all projects do have to grapple with this issue of sustainability so you know that's been one of the reasons for our long-term approach trying to build that sort of organic sense of our champions as a group who would continue to work together after we pulled out so we've had a bit of a trial in a way of sustainability and action over the last year or so um due to the pandemic um obviously we have had to modify our fieldwork program we've had to adjust our training program around that and what's you know what really came out when we did our rounds of final feedback interviews a little bit earlier this year was how much the champions had actually kept taking initiatives so some of the cases Narra was just talking about with regard to the mining companies that was all happening when we weren't actually there at all in the communities that the champions were taking these initiatives by themselves um some of our champions have set up a Facebook group you know that they're using that to inform each other of of you know things that they want to monitor and bring up in in local meetings in local forums the example that Joyce gave earlier in Nicena that was a really big one sorry the chairs is a really big one in Nicena which was one of the communities again where we had not carried out round two so partly to test sustainability we decided at the end of 2019 we had been in four communities we stopped working in true and we continued with our mentoring process and the other two so we were trying to see which approach would be more successful now I'm not sure to what extent it's actually caused an effect but when we looked at the data on the legal awareness that we put on the graph earlier when we compared the two communities where we had continued working with the two communities where we had stopped working there's actually a slightly bigger increase in improved legal awareness in the communities where we pulled out of and our hunch is that that's because knowing that we've gone that the champions were working closely together to make sure that they were still collaborating as a group so I think um yeah I mean it's a it's a really important issue and something we're still trying to learn from but I think those are just some some things I can I can say for starters thanks yeah I mean this is this is such an important question and I was just wondering whether perhaps Joyce and Nara might like to add something to that at all do you have any concerns about the sustainability of this approach into the future Joyce perhaps you'd like to speak on that no Liz is actually covered everything okay all right there we go then um let me perhaps go on to the next question then um we have a question from Joyadri Ray from Equations India who works on sustainable tourism what were the strategies that helped men to be supportive of women's decision making Joyce perhaps you can tell us about the approach in Tanzania how to bring men on board how do we bring men on board Joyce from your experience in Tanzania okay uh how do we bring men on board is actually to from the initials of starting their project men should be involved from the very beginning because if we do not do that if we exclude them from the very beginning that's when they end up actually mistranslating the project so to say for example when we were actually starting at this project in this both community was talking a lot about women rights land rights to women uh importance of actually involving women in decision making over natural resources governance and all that many men actually started to question like okay why are we here it looks like something is for women but it took time for us to really explain slowly and then later on these men start to understand that okay so that's why we are here to start to know that both women and men should be involved in decision making everything we do so it's very important to have them from the very very beginning and to explain the purpose of that particular project that they are the key players when it comes to actually giving rights to women especially that we know most of the practices are being practised by them which in one way or the other pray or presses women so having them on board very in the very early stages that helps to go with them all together and support women's rights thank you that's great thank you thank you very much Joyce um Lara would you perhaps like to say something about that in your context thank you Chris how do you bring men on board in Mongolia is there any of any differences yeah just want to share one experience you know that when we started our training program in Mongolia when the male champions say that it's a gender issue you know like if once gender issue is all women's issue why we are here they say you know so they were even laughing you know like but after two three sessions even after two one session you know like they said gender issue is not the woman's issue you know like it's a it's also men's issue and meaning you know like men and women they have to really work together and to do this to to really participate in the decision-making processes so this is really powerful if they are all together you know so just want to share this experience thank you thank you thank you very much for that um while we're waiting for some more questions to come through I'd like to maybe pick up on that and ask the question myself if you might allow me um I'd be interested to know what kinds of men put themselves forward for the to take part in this project I mean is it always the younger men or is it somebody older men do you have a way of spotting who might be a good champion or a better champion than somebody else oh that's a good question Chris um and actually gives me a great opportunity to just say a bit more about how we went about um choosing our champions so um in fact as I mentioned at the start it was really a community driven process so throughout uh stage one of the research you know we were going around in community baseline survey we did participatory focus group discussions and we were constantly on the lookout for um you know people that seemed to be quite respected that were um uh you know had some positions of influence or were contributing well in the research and we also um uh when we came to the actual process of selecting champions we talked with uh different local people or different leaders we got a whole lot of nominations for that and one of our questions uh we did interviews with all the prospective champions one of our questions was you know are you are you interested like you know do you see this as an issue do you want to be part of this and so the only people that started with I guess the ones that um you know were were open to it from that sense um but you know at the same time uh and I saw a question in the Q&A on this earlier with regard to the youth um I would say in round one we we probably did tend to have more um middle age and older people among the champions uh and but when we came to round two in the two communities where we did our second round and the existing champions um were very much part of that process of just nominating the next ones to be trained there was a very strong message in both countries that they wanted to have lots of younger people and they were you know really working very hard to identify those younger people that they saw as prospective future leaders are within the community um as that so you know we've ended up with a really good mix across all ages on that front thanks Chris okay that's great um I'm looking for other questions I know we've had lots of questions coming in but they've all got a bit jungled up in the um um in the in the in the in the masses of hellos from all of the interesting and and really really widely dispersed people around the world have been taking part in our webinar um and let me see you know yes there's a very good question from from uh let's me say now could you talk please about the process of how local champions are selected I think you've already said a little bit about that but have you experienced challenges here such as consolidating the power of already locally powerful and influential people and this is all about power relations within the society within each community um and and how you deal with that because clearly it's a potentially difficult issue to to to overcome um yeah maybe I can just jump in uh something about that what I didn't make clear um earlier actually was that uh we specifically didn't include champions um who were actual local government officials um so we had champions who were um on you know positions of local leadership but who were actually government officials and then in our step four of our training in all the countries we then brought the local government officials in together um so that they could uh champions would have a chance to share some of what they learned they actually um performed some of their role plays for the local government officials to make them really aware of the issues that were coming up um and then the the champions on the government side were kind of having the opportunity to to look at how they could collaborate together um to strengthen and protect the community land rights so um so that was one of our criteria um we did have you know we had a few other criteria I'm very happy to pick up on that after the webinar with um you know with anyone who'd like to know in more detail about that actual process but it it took quite a long time it was quite comprehensive we've got lots of spreadsheets and lots of interview notes and thoughts about the scribble from you know from that process thanks yes I know there's a massive information out there and I would suggest that to everyone that you go onto the Makora website and click on the the link to the vaults project you find a whole host of material there um to to to to give you much more detail about what we've been talking about today um we have a question from here from Stephanie Lanker thank you very much for sharing your insights on this project can you share what were some of the main challenges during the course of the five years and this is directed at Liz um I feel like I'm answering too many questions here but that's okay um did I mention COVID and the pandemic uh that was a pretty big one um we obviously you know that and that but as I said before actually that ended up being an opportunity to see how the communities you know would uh would respond to that and um we had a lot of support from the communities who understood um you know the difficulties when we were not able to come when we planned and we had to adapt the way we were doing the training um we some of you will have seen on the website photos of champions with face masks on and all sorts of things like that um we also um we had a specific issue actually um last year we had planned in our fifth community I mentioned we had a fifth community that joined in 2017 and we had wanted to actually go back and develop the model a little bit um to see how we could embed um the local government leaders uh the local government officials more with working alongside the champions from earlier on so that was part of the project and part of the methodology that we wanted to test out and just due to the location and the COVID restrictions we had to call back completely on that so that's something we're still you know would like to explore more in the future but yeah there's always challenges um over a long period of time um I don't know if Nara or Joyce want to jump in and mention anything specific on that um Nara? Yeah thank you please just want to hit that but uh the challenge I would say you know like a snow storm with dust wind and all sorts of things were really challenging sometimes especially during the spring time but we obviously avoid to from these kind of natural disasters and we we actually planned the uh the training schedule with with the communities so that they tell us when they're available and when they can attend when they come from the mountain or from the state tourism center to to have to have our training and other than that I would say you know like uh we give usually the champions give some time after one training sometimes to digest to to dig down what they've learned and also sometimes we give them chance quite a bit of time to experience and to try out what they learned in the training in their real life with their communities so that was really good and because some of them even called us you know like they say when are you coming when is the next training you know like it's uh it's very you know sometimes a lot of people we don't experience it that much you know like PCC we do a lot of training but these champions they always ask us chasing us after you know after us uh and was really great actually working with them thank you thanks Laura Joyce um I mean again to answer the same question thinking back over your five years of experience in Tanzania I mean could you maybe say something about those challenges in terms of there must have been some very difficult moments along the way could you maybe identify a couple things yeah I have a few examples to share in this one uh yeah we have had a lot of stories of the success on this project but always there are challenges one of the challenges is as actually Nara has shared about their distances in Tanzania uh people to bring to bring them together uh from their very very remote areas was actually a challenge because it's very far and on the way some of them may actually encounter dangerous animals so that's one of the challenges faced us during the implementation of this but another one uh is actually if you can remember I talked about a woman being considered a property so that's another challenge changing the minds of the people from telling other people uh like a property yeah you know it takes time to and that this is not a property and remember these people has been respecting and living bonded with their norms and customs that a woman is actually a property owned by a man so telling them that it's not a property by a person who also deserve even to own their properties then it really took time but slowly but sure these people then start to realize and start to give the support but another one actually as usual there are seven people in the community it was not every champion actually not even a champion let alone another community member who was ready to support our project I remember one example from one of the project communities one day we were just doing a training and the leader from above uh government leader came in and as part of protocol we have to give this leader a chance to actually greet people and say something and after he's done actually to say some few words he asked the champions how do you feel about their training to me it looks very well but one person raised the hand this is a pastor known as paulo sendila he said oh I we don't even understand these people they have been preaching about women's land right they have been preaching about involving women in decision making they do not know what they are talking about so we are here to wait to know what they're telling us we didn't really argue on that instead the the other champions helped us to intervene and say to the leader from the government no you know this person we know him he's that's how he is so yeah those are the few examples from sentinia thank you back to you please thank you very much Joyce I think that's a really really good story and just underlines the importance of selecting the right people to be to be champions both amongst the men under women in your communities we have a question here for Joyce again Joyce get ready for this one okay from Stefan a print global land alliance printx coordinator those are the development of the recently developed LIS tool the LIS tool in Tanzania significantly improve women and community land rights and maybe and at least look at this in terms of transparency perhaps come again Chris would you like me to repeat the question yeah please okay those the development of the recently developed LIS tool in Tanzania significantly improve women and community land rights in terms of transparency sorry more clearly if you're not able to because it's cutting it's it's on and off Chris it's cutting on and off is it okay maybe I can move on to a more general question just meanwhile perhaps we could ask Stefan to maybe expand a bit on her question so we put it back to you if that's okay if she wouldn't mind and I'll ask Casey to be able to look out for that um there's a question here from one of my colleagues at Makora from Ray Grisel could I check with Joyce whether the vaults approach has been picked up by governmental or other institutions outside Haki Medini Chris did you not get that as well is it a bad line it's it's on and off it's cutting a little bit can you please ask okay I'm going to say it very slowly okay could I check with Joyce is the question whether the vaults approach has been picked up by governmental or other institutions outside Haki Medini thank you very much for the good question Chris uh as we talk today uh not a higher government actually has taken the approach but the local government I mean the village leaders who have been receiving some insights like some information from the trendy champions have been using the very same approach uh by involving everybody in decision making because because even before even the village leaders were also can I say like ignorant when it comes to involving everybody in the community so after creating this awareness among the community champions the village leaders have started to like question why women are not here in this meeting so it's to us that's a success that the village uh leaders where actually the problems existing have actually taken up this approach and they are applying in their daily uh meetings or discussions thank you thanks for that I've got a question here from Louisa Johnson of FAO your project lasted for five years um this is a the kind of question you probably expect from a major organization that's involved in this kind of work and particularly concerned about funding and and very practical issues of that nature the question is were the lessons learned would it be possible to achieve the same results in other countries in a shorter time train and the second part of the question is do you intend to share lessons learned between countries um shall I answer that one yeah sure um thanks Louisa for the question um so uh we are I mentioned earlier we're still continuing with our learnings and we're hoping to develop those over the next year or so um one of the things that we are very keen to look at is actually bringing together in some kind of um online forum a bit like this but uh with our champions from both communities to share some of those learnings directly um the first part of the question sir I just missed that Chris could you would you mind just to repeat the first part I didn't write it down uh effectively it is it's kind with the lessons learned there's a possible achieve achieve the same results in other countries in a shorter time frame oh yeah okay next the patient's funding and for resources and and and impacts in in the context of other things happening as well yeah so um so that was actually one of the frustrations when the pandemic kicked in last year um because uh one of the goals of our round two as well as um as well as testing out how it worked in communities where we continued and communities where we uh where we kind of pulled back and and and left the champions to you know see how they would continue by themselves um what we had actually decided to do or hope to do in our round two was to roll out the training much faster um and also by building in this mentoring process we were trying to work out sort of something that would potentially be quite sustainable I hesitate to call it a training of trainers but that sort of idea you know that you branch out you have your first cohort and then you have your next ones and then you expand out into the surrounding areas so um we were really keen to try and um see how that would work you know over the first round of training we had bigger gaps uh between the different sessions and partly that was because instead of creating the whole curriculum at the start um and just you know coming in and and following like well you know this is what we're doing um we did it step by step and we got feedback from the champions every step of the way so we would design the first part of the training we would do that we would test for the feedback and then we would go away and we would like develop what we were going to do next so the whole process initially took quite a long time and we did want to test doing it faster so again that's something that you know we would hope that we might be able to do in future um but you know just life happens and a lot of things um within the project had to change last year because of the pandemic um so yeah you know we're very conscious of all these sustainability issues and um I think maybe I can just highlight as well and and perhaps Nara would say something about it as well the the collaboration that we embarked on um in Mongolia with the national land agency there um so we took the principles and the approach that we've been using in one of our communities and then we worked hand in hand to develop these guidelines that um Nara just held up in the book that's been published so you know that's the kind of those are kind of showing the opportunities for a more sustainable and much wider scale approach um you know the guidelines in that book are not exactly the same as the training approach that we followed but it draws on the same principles and it's that kind of thing that I think um you know makes bigger impact so I don't know Nara if you do you want to just say a little bit more about about how we went about that and how our champions were actually involved in working with the local government um in developing those guidelines do you want to say anything a bit more sure thank you Liz yes we uh we uh as I said we really closely work collaborated with local with the national government and local government and with the champions we we very much involved with our champions and also other community members and one of our um the managing director of PCC Tama made a big role in this and she actually herself went out to the countryside and meeting with the people and including the the governors local people and they made a lots of pop group discussions and she herself actually developed the guideline together with the with the local people and local government and then we and also there was a the land officer from the national land agency also in land officers and management the sector of directors also involved in it and it was it is actually a whole that the whole process was very holistic in in terms of including everyone uh in it and then that's why that's that's why it is actually taken by the government to include in their guideline thank you thank you I mean I put on the line that um a lot of the world's program has been about developing the methodology and the tools so in that context I think using this further in other places would obviously take a if you like could be done in a short time frame to to respond also to to Louise's point um we have a really interesting question here about young and single women which I think is really important and I think it may in fact have to be our last question unfortunately as we are being limited by time but this is a particularly important question I feel so I'm going to put this one to you all but that Liz might respond firstly in relation to challenges were you able to have young and single women with children or widows or other marginalised groups participate in your trainings or being champions often they are not able to take part in meetings due to their various difficult circumstances Liz would you perhaps like to pick up on response to that and then I'm going to have to I think maybe close the session for the Q&A session at least um yeah sure I mean it's a good question for sure and it's an issue that comes up in all research that's certainly that I've been involved in is you know how do you ensure the participation when people have domestic responsibilities um among other things and you know we had some uh I can think of one example um one of the times I was with Naran Mongolia when there was the big snow storm and we had some young girls who were in the training and the fathers didn't want them to have to travel to the place where we were doing training just because of the risk of travel in the snowstorm um well you know of course our champions those who had young children and babies they brought them with them to the training um one of our team members um you know also had a young child for part of the training and and you know so we we really like I think um just the way I would answer that is to say that we try to live by example so as a team we try to make sure that we were um you know respecting all of those constraints and considerations and and encouraging the champions to do the same so I hope that we manage you you know to overcome that as much as we could but I do appreciate that it is um still an ongoing problem um you know when you're doing this kind of work thank you indeed thank thank you Liz um look we've had some really excellent questions already and thank you so much for for placing those questions to us I'm sure there are dozens of other questions that need to be answered but we simply haven't got time um as I said earlier on uh we the team will make a strong effort to to answer all the questions if possible either in other contacts through emails or through through right up and and other formats um thank you everyone for placing those questions and I am sorry that we couldn't get through more often but I'm sure you understand our our limitations in terms of time particularly with this this online format um so in that context I'm going to ask Liz if she'd like to make a few brief final remarks just to close up the presentation from the side of the the Volts team um before I close the meeting okay thank you Liz oh thanks very much Chris um it's been a really interesting discussion and good to see all the questions um coming up I think um I'm not sure if we said this earlier but we'll be keeping a record of all of that so anything we haven't answered um we're all more than happy to reach out with you personally and um and follow up some of those discussions um so yeah just to recap um our key takeaways so really the importance of involving both men and women and also of committing to the long-term involvement at the community level I think those are two key things um what we've found really importantly is that protecting women's rights and community rights by strengthening gender equity around local land governance um this this really happens when the community leads the changes and chooses their own champions to address their own local issues so you know we've very much taken the facilitating role the supportive role um and really tried to develop things organically there uh so we do see real potential to replicate it's and as Mike said earlier as well not it's not so much just replicating it's like adapting some of the lessons that we've learned and adapting some of the processes and the approaches um and you know trying to look at different contexts where some of the lessons that we've learned will come to bear and you know um the report we've published today a lot of the lessons will be in there we're still um ongoing with our lesson learning process so do look out for more of our blogs um and different um the different pieces that we'll be bringing out over the next year or so um I think it's important really to emphasise the uh participatory nature of the groundwork so building relations with the community checking what we're learning checking the research findings the correct checking what the community would like us to do with that and how we can help facilitate that and really um I should just give a big shout out to all the people in our communities we've learned so much from all of them and you know we think the the project has shown us so many great leaders out there and it's just about having that legal knowledge and really above all having the confidence uh to navigate the terms to speak up and protect their rights to work as a team um so thanks very much Chris back to you thank you thank you Liz I would say we're getting a load of really positive comments coming through here on the on the chat box um lots of thanks to various people and thank you for the documents and everything else and we will make a very strong attempt to respond to all of you the comments and corrections are coming in and provide email contacts and other information but it's now time to unfortunately to close the meeting um we have a limited time available may I say myself how much I've enjoyed sharing it um it's refreshing to see the world's approach moving away from what I would say is a traditional narrow focus on formalizing for example the rights of individual women or women's groups focusing on land titles for example and using a whole society approach with a focus on changing gender relations to secure the rights of all women by changing norms within the society you address the situation of all women in that society and not just involving those lucky enough for example to benefit from more conventional titling and targeted programs as women gain new roles and confidence that it's clear that vaults is helping whole communities as well to gain more secure tenure and to achieve a greater voice in terms of what happens when new investments are proposed and implemented I think this is changing the way that men and women interact and bringing men into this equation in the vaults in the vaults project is fundamental involving male champions and really addressing the the culture norms in the community clearly we have to respect the cultures and the wide diversity of cultures is exemplified by the two cases we've heard about today but cultures can change and norms can change and as we know in many traditional societies men are the guardians of those norms and the way they're applied so bringing men in as champions in this process I think has been absolutely critical to to achieve the kind of wider changes that are involved and I think the most important thing really is that these normative changes will project into the future and beside just as your sustainability as well as the young generation would forward with these new changes in the bankers at work and they will continue to impact on one women in a very positive way and become the way to do things in the future the real life stories that we've heard from Joyce and Nara I think have been fascinating and really underlining the the key impact of this project at a very personal level for communities and even listening to Joyce and Nara themselves it's quite clear that the passion and the personal impact that this project has had upon them as well I think which is which is really wonderful to hear I think personally this kind of approach again addressing the gender relations bringing women squarely into the whole discussion the development model the decision-making process etc etc is is essential and can usher in a new equitable and sustainable development model for everyone for all countries everywhere in trans-patriarchal relations and male dominated policy processes are still an issue even in a country like Great Britain where apparently lots of progress has been made but it's still there in terms of equality and discrimination issues so I think the the the lessons that we've learned today have been fundamentally important for everyone thank you at this point I'm going to close now and say thank you very much for everything you've done Nara, Joyce, Liz and the whole world's team thank you for the work you've put in and and also the information you've given us today giving us your time and giving us all such a lot to take away and to think about thank you to Mike Taylor from ILC and to Neil Sorenson and the LAN portal team for organizing this web event webinar event together with Makoro and finally of course thank you to everyone who's taken part thank you to all of you the participants to our audience who registered and have taken part in today's webinar on women and community land rights to investing in local champions without the the huge registration I think something over over 600 people registered to this event this is what it's about it's engaging with you and and getting this information out into into the into the public domain so that we can all work together to take this excellent methodology forwards so thank you very much once again stay safe everyone in these times of COVID thank you very very much indeed and goodbye