VVOB forges partnerships with organisations who can ensure the gender-sensitivity of its educational interventions. Gender equity will remain a top priority for VVOB for years to come. “Because anyone who is serious about sustainable development cooperation, is serious about quality education for girls”, asserts Sven Rooms, programme director of VVOB.
Easy choice
The Sustainable Development Goals envision a better future for all people. Why does VVOB put particular emphasis on girls and women?
“International research is unequivocal: girls and women are disproportionally disadvantaged socially, economically and politically, especially in the global South. If we are serious about development and progress – which VVOB is – we cannot neglect the especially bad situations in which half of our world’s population lives. We need to make an extra effort for our girls and women.”
How will VVOB’s focus on gender in education foster sustainable change by 2030 and in the longer term?
“Women are not only a statistic of disadvantage and therefore in themselves a rightful beneficiary of international cooperation. They are also drivers of sustainable change and the agents through which this vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty can be broken. For example, studies show that a mother’s level of education has a great impact on her children’s own schooling, their health and their later income. The argument for choosing women in international cooperation is thus forceful both for development today and for development in the future.”
Smart interventions
It is often assumed that ensuring access to school for girls is sufficient for gender equality, but VVOB disagrees. Why?
“Getting girls to school is of course important, because education can indeed close the gap between boys and girls, and be an emancipatory force. But note that I say it can be and not that it is, because in many cases the opposite is true. In an education system where girls experience gender-based violence, either physical or verbal, or where teachers have lower expectations for them than they have for boys, or where gender stereotypes are reinforced in textbooks, education can be a discriminatory force, further widening the gap, instead of an emancipatory one. And in these situations, girls do not to go to school. Education interventions need to be smart and tackle these underlying beliefs about gender first to ensure quality education. Then, more girls will go to school.”
How are VVOB’s interventions ‘smart’?
“We are a partner of ministries of Education in nine countries in the implementation of their education policies. As such, we have a unique opportunity to put gender at the forefront of these policies on a large and systemic level. Plentiful research has shown that strong teachers and school leaders have the biggest direct impact on quality education. VVOB therefore focusses its efforts on improving the practices of these two sets of actors through capacity development, all the while mainstreaming gender and ensuring that the emancipatory possibilities of education are seized.”
Gender partners in crime
VVOB is an education expert, not a gender expert (yet). How do you make sure your work is as gender-proof as you mean it to be?
“Gender has become a starting point for our interventions these last three years, and will continue to be so even more in the next five. Our expertise is still growing, which is why we reach out to organisations with a longer tradition in the gender sphere. The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and RoSa vzw are our go-to gender specialists. By partnering up, both our and their interventions are more effective. VVOB employees are also encouraged to continuously develop their knowledge and skills through trainings and workshops, whether organised by UNESCO for example, by our structural partners or by ourselves.”
Each structural partnership has its own specific benefits. How does VVOB’s partnership with FAWE and VVOB’s partnership with RoSa work in practice?
“Our partnerships cover a wide range of activities. In a nutshell: whenever we feel we lack a certain expertise, we ask them for help. For example, FAWE developed a teacher’s handbook for gender responsive pedagogy – an approach to pedagogy in which gender is mainstreamed. We use this tool to train teachers and school leaders to handle gender diversity in the classrooms and to reflect on how they can make sure stereotypes are countered and girls feel safe and welcome in school. This is present across the (geographical) spectrum of our work, but of course adapted to each country’s specific gender-related context. In Cambodia, for example, a lack of female role models to look up to for girls and young women is an important reason why some quit school during their adolescent years. One of the ways in which VVOB has intervened, was to develop new, female-friendly and gender-neutral textbooks – based on FAWE’s model – for maths and science that picture girls in active roles, as much as they do boys. The textbooks were officially endorsed by the Ministry of Education of Cambodia in 2015 and are now part of the curriculum for student teachers.”
“Our partnership with RoSa is of a slightly different nature. Like us, FAWE is an educational organisation. RoSa, on the other hand, is a more horizontal gender-organisation and documentation facility that is active in any field where gender is important. For us, they check all our interventions for the gender-sensitive imaging of boys and girls. They even gender-check our own publications, which sometimes hide unconscious gender stereotypes too. At VVOB, we are reflective of the fact that there is always room for us to grow. RoSa supports our country teams in becoming more gender-sensitive and has organised several trainings and workshops for our countries’ gender focal points.”
The right lens
In 2017, VVOB will begin work under its fourth multiannual programme funded by the Belgian development cooperation (DGD) (2017-2021). Which role will gender play on the ground?
“The multiannual programme is infused with gender from start till finish. In Rwanda, for example, we will support the Ministry of Education to train teachers and school leaders to reflect and look at their pupils through a gender lens in math lessons. Statistics namely show that girls perform worse than boys in this area, which is remarkable because research agrees that, in a perfect world, girls perform better than boys. So something is amiss; the expectations for and aspirations of girls, maybe? Or are the assessment methods to blame? We aim to create an environment in which girls have equal opportunities to reach their potential.”
“But we are also aware that girls may face other barriers to learning than just gender-related ones. In Vietnam for example, we are shifting our geographical focus to the centre of the country, where the majority of the population is from an ethnic minority. Girls from these groups face linguistic barriers as well as gender ones in school. We will capacitate teachers and school leaders to be aware of this intersectionality and provide them with the tools to empower girls in their classrooms, but also with tools to reach out to minority groups in which girls are provided with less opportunities.”
Donors 4 gender
Coming to the end of the 2014-2016 multiannual programme funded by DGD, which gender-related projects are considered important and successful enough for VVOB to continue working on in the next five years?
“In Suriname, Ecuador and the Democratic Republic of the Congo we work on improving the quality of technical and vocational education and training. Here, girls often choose the ‘soft’ courses, whereas boys more often choose the ‘hard’ courses that conveniently also lead to better paid professions. Through campaigns, we want to change this mindset that girls cannot weld as well as boys for example, and make welding a more attractive profession for girls. Not only do we target the education system, but also communities and employers. This is something we have done for a few years, and will keep on doing.”
“But VVOB is increasingly exploring innovative partnerships, other than with DGD. For example, ECSITE is a project in Zambia co-funded by the European Union that aims to improve the quality of the education girls and other vulnerable children receive in community schools. A different EU-funded project focusses on inclusive education in South Africa, where girls often experience gender-based violence in schools. We also work together with philanthropic organisations such as the ELMA Foundation, with whom we are working on strengthening teaching practice and mentoring of early childhood education student teachers in Zambia. Gender interventions become extra smart if you partner up with the right and like-minded donors and organisations!”
