In this episode of 15 Minutes to Change the World, we're marking World Humanitarian Day by speaking with Caroline Aol, CARE Uganda's Interim Manager for the project where the Women Lead in Emergencies interventions are undertaken, and she is also CARE Uganda's Women Lead in Emergencies specialist.
Caroline discusses her work as a humanitarian, challenges and rewards, and most importantly the need for women to have voice and leadership in humanitarian decision-making.
In this episode of 15 Minutes to Change the World, we're marking World Humanitarian Day by speaking with Caroline Aol, CARE Uganda's Interim Manager for the project where the Women Lead in Emergencies interventions are undertaken, and she is also CARE Uganda's Women Lead in Emergencies specialist.
Caroline discusses her work as a humanitarian, challenges and rewards, and most importantly the need for women to have voice and leadership in humanitarian decision-making.
Hello, and welcome to 15 minutes to change the world where in 15 minutes or less, you can learn a bit more about the world and how you can help change it for the better. My name is, and I'm the host of this podcast. In this episode of 15 minutes to change the world. We're marking world humanitarian day. By speaking with Caroline ill care, Uganda's interim manager for the project where the women lead in emergencies, interventions are undertaken, and she is also carried on women. Lead an emergency specialist. Caroline joins us remotely from care in Uganda, state Caroline. It's wonderful to have the chance to speak with you today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Laura.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Well, Caroline, we'll dive right into the questions if I may. Um, can you share with our listeners please? What inspired you to get involved in humanitarian
Speaker 2:Work? Okay. Thank you. Lama. I started my in Monteria and work close to 15 years ago, right after my university. And, uh, I come from an environment that was marred by conflict in Northern Uganda. And, um, I've seen my relatives live through the internet. This place comes. So for me, I struggled to see a change in terms of how we can move away from conflict to a more enabling environment where all women, girls, boys, and men can be peacefully. So for that, it's enabled me to study community psychology that has, um, put me in the humanitarian field where I can work directly with the parcels in conflict. Caroline,
Speaker 1:Can you explain what women need in emergencies is for our listeners? And what's your role in this project?
Speaker 2:Women lead in emergencies or modes of intervention developed by care to support women and girls groups to take leadership in responding to the crisis that affects them and their communities by promoting inclusive, active participation and the leadership of women in communities at the forefront of crisis. This model prepares women and girls with life skills to respond to crisis and reducing their vulnerabilities. Oftentimes women directly affected by crisis are still excluded from your mentor and responses and from public decision-making spaces. As such, when women's voices are not heard, women's rights and needs are often not adequately met. And an emergency response can further reinforce inequalities that perpetrate vulnerabilities insecurity, poverty and more non-inclusive interventions. My role is to empower women and girls groups with skills to overcome their barriers, to lead and encourage meaningfully participate in an enabling environment, uh, under the groups that empowered to empower other groups to ensure learning is cascaded to the grassroots as a more sustainable.
Speaker 1:Um, how are you seeing women and girls lead in their communities when it comes to emergency response? And then how does this involvement of women and girls? How does it carry over into the longer term?
Speaker 2:So we've undertaken, um, rapid gender analysis. And the findings from this analysis shows the impact of crisis on women's equal participation and the leadership in the community and humanitarian decision-making and action participating, uh, women and girls groups themselves define what participation and leadership means for them in their context, what their goals are participating in or leading humanitarian action and what needs to change for them to exercise their right, to participate in decisions that affect their lives, that we may need intervention, supports women to reflect on these issues or barriers as well as prevailing opportunities, where they can analyze these together with other women and girls and co-create actions or interventions to address these barriers, the groups participating in action learning as they reflect on what is working, what is workable and why, including how they can scale the workable approach to realize that bigger impact while identifying the alleys for support to adapt to their change strategies. We have seen women challenge the status quo and humanitarian responses. One of the actual work by one of the women's groups. So it's community support to bring the food distribution closer to their village that, uh, helped benefit the community as a whole. Now, how does the involvement of women and girls in images, response carry over into the longer term, the continued empowerment or women and girls and creating an enabling environment through other women and men of influence increases their confidence to lead an action, their aspirations, eventually their voices are heard and interventions are inclusive of their needs and vulnerabilities eventually addressed. Thank you, Caroline,
Speaker 1:What are the greatest challenges you're seeing in your work and then what are the greatest opportunities or rewards?
Speaker 2:Thank you, Lamar. Um, at this time the pilot women lead in a room with smile. The biggest challenges that we did interface with were breaking through the negative cultural practices that still support stifling women's voices. Uh, we also did approach, uh, men's resistance, women's participation in civic leadership activities. We also, um, experienced overwhelming domestic and reproductive burden on women, which prevented them from taking up, um, interactions with the community or even going for community meetings or engagements that really do involve the decisions. And also the impacts of COVID-19 has, um, caused, written further restrictions, um, that the women were really exposed to, including the economic strike, where they have to, um, continue to support their families. And, uh, also another challenge that I see is the international, uh, lack of inclusion of women in decision making spaces. Um, by, as humanitarian workers has also further exacerbated, um, breaking through the women lead or bringing women to the table discussions. So these are still some of the challenges that we're still undergo, but we continue to advocate for them looking at the greatest rewards, um, that we have been able to Ghana over time since 2019, we've managed to get men to work with us, um, working with men to address negative money masculinities that perpetrate violence against women and girls addressing women and girls literacy through functional adult literacy, um, learning that has boosted their confidence and aspirations to meaningfully participate in community actions and critical decision-making spaces. And, and this is one of those that, um, the basis that helps to actually meant to go forward, especially literate women, and also the other rewards include increased number of women varying for leadership positions in the mainstream formal leadership structures in the refugee settlements. Um, we also have the CBF community facilitators structures in the community where we're seeing more women, um, being involved in, in, in leadership, in recruitment into these positions, uh, taking up group leadership, being the leader within the water committee, the village savings and loan association among others. For me, those are some of the rewards. Also we have managed to, uh, through this intervention support women to address conflict related psychological distress that initially did impede their participation. And I believe, um, this is still one of those, um, in pigments across the refugee settlements, also, we're able to see an increased inter group collaboration where actually the learning were developed across different groups, initially groups who are in isolation or working in silos. But now we see a lot of that incident group interaction and learning from the different, uh, cultures and tribes. And that helps too to increase collaboration across the refugee settlement. Um, we've also been able to undertake women's conferences that has increased networking, uh, increased peaceful coexistence with women who are having common needs and impediments and how they can overcome this, uh, collectively well involving partners as well as agencies in the humanitarian space. It's also one of the rewards is the COVID-19 set the stage for women to take on ad hoc leadership positions, as well as prevention interventions for their communities, such as making liquid soap, um, as a strive to prevent COVID-19 participating in sensitization sessions, counseling, other women and GBV survivors advocating for the reduction of teenage pregnancy as part of, um, the COVID-19 pandemic, uh, effects. And also finally, um, the women lead companies, one of the rewards is through this model. It helps you to tailor and suit to fit interventions within the context with which the program is being implemented. So it's not a one size fits all, but, um, it's, it's a model that helps you to work with the context that you're in to come out with programs that will work for the women in that location. Thank you, Carolyn.
Speaker 1:Um, do you have a message for, for the Canadian public or Canadian policymakers? What, what would you like them to know about the work that
Speaker 2:You're doing? Um, the pilot that we started in 2019 was through funding from the Canadian government, the global affairs Canada, and, um, to date of 2021 global affairs, Canada continues to support women leading interventions. And we have seen enormous change in the lives of women and girls with several successes to attribute that to policy makers around the world should continue to advocate for the intentional inclusion of the voices and decisions of marginalized groups, especially women and girls around the world, especially those caught up in crisis to participate in designing interventions that best suits them and their contexts. Um, this reduces vulnerabilities and increases agile responses from resilient women, girls, men, and boys in their communities. Overall, this increases co-created actions that reduce dependency and the bottom approach that, uh, most humanitarian workers I use to, but rather adopt the bottom up approach that, um, helps to, to make, um, more sensitive interventions that, um, bring in meaningful use of the funds and the grants that we receive as well as, um, setting the global stage for the involvement of women's voices all over.
Speaker 1:How can our listeners support humanitarian work and empower women to lead in emergencies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the listeners can continue to spread the word. And also the learning about women's leadership in emergencies, especially, and to keep the fire burning because when we do involve more women and girls in these interventions at an early stage, we are setting the stage for the global involvement, global inclusion of women into leadership positions globally. And it doesn't only stop at the humanitarian level. It doesn't stop at, um, the refugee context. It goes across in development contexts, even in contexts where there is no conflict with, we have to start. Now, we have to involve women and girls consider their decisions, sick and consult them and how best we can work together. Also, I would like to add that, um, when we do not know about what's happening in the humanitarian work, it's easily under the carpet. So the intention or awareness of the needs of women and girls, as well as boys and men in, in a humanitarian work or in humanitarian contexts, and why we need to work with the refugees, the internally displaced persons, the persons caught up in natural, natural disasters and, um, conflict related emergencies. They are not lost people. It's not like they have lost everything. They still have a resilience or willpower. So we can do our part. We can rethink our interventions, redesign our interventions, and also, um, support them because, uh, we cannot do the work alone. We have to work together with this past so that we can be able to realize more durable solutions and lasting change in the communities. And also, uh, from these life skills that they will be able to learn. They'll be able to take on to their, their countries where they come from, as well as create communities that are more resilient and communities that are more inclusive and open to supporting women and men, girls, and boys. And of course finally the intentional support of women and girls across programs, not only in women lead in emergency, but involving an embedding women to lead across programs. Thank you, Caroline.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for, for taking the time to speak with us today about incredible power of women's leadership in emergency contexts around the world.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Lamar. I would like to also find that team in Uganda, the women lead team in Uganda, uh, in, uh, in, in Western Uganda, as well as the management of care Uganda for supporting this intervention for striving to have the voices of women, um, involved across the programs. And also I would like to send a special thanks to the global women lead team who continue to strive for a change for learning as well as the funders global affairs Canada. Thank you so much for the support. Thank you, Caroline. Um,
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us and thank you to all of you for tuning in. You can stay up to date on the latest episode of 15 minutes to change the world by following us on Spotify, apple podcasts, and by visiting care.ca/podcasts.