A team of gender champions formed a network within OHCEA on March 14, 2016 at Holiday Inn in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This was during a 5-day trainer of trainers (TOT) workshop on Gender, One Health and Infectious Disease. The workshop brought together 15 faculty from the seven OHCEA countries and 3 OHCEA Secretariat Staff. Participants were drawn from different disciplines including Veterinary Medicine, Human Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, Environmental Health and Social Sciences.
The workshop facilitators were gender experts namely Dr. Hellen Amuguni from Tufts University, Ms. Niyati Shah, the USAID Senior Technical Advisor on gender and Prof Anthony Mugisha, Dean at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Bio-diversity (COVAB).
Participants were exposed to highly interactive training methodologies that ensured full participant engagement, manifested cultural diversity and questioned gender biases and stereotypes. With simulation and case study development, participants demonstrated the knowledge gained at the workshop on outbreak detection, prevention and response. Social media was also made use of. Dr. Sarah Ssali, a gender expert at Makerere University posted tweets of the interactive processes, while Agnes Yawe set up a group page using WhatsApp for the network members to interact after the workshop.
At the end of the workshop, participants drew country action plans which shall be shared with the OHCEA country teams, with the aim of devising strategies of implementing plans. The Secretariat staff too, prepared a regional work plan that will guide the process of mainstreaming gender across the network and institutionalizing gender through development of a gender policy, strategy and monitoring and evaluation indicators.
To initiate the process of integrating gender in OHCEA work, some participants shall be invited to the OH modules development workshop scheduled for May 9-13, 2016 to engender the modules. The facilitators provided a Facilitator Guide, which they refined during the TOT workshop, to each participant to guide the planned country gender-related activities for students and faculty.
Article by OHCEA Communication Team