Further to recent email discussions I am writing to share with you all work that my organisation, the London-based International Cooperation for Development, part of CIIR, has been doing with partner organisations around issues of masculinity and gender violence in Nicaragua and other Latin American and Caribbean countries.
For the last six years we have provided a gender and masculinity trainer to work with firstly Cantera, the Centre for Communication and Popular Education in Managua developing methodologies of working with men. He has also supported the efforts to set up an NGO dealing specifically with this issue. In 2000 the Association of Men Against Violence was set up to develop the work at a national level in Nicaragua. ICD/CIIR has also supported efforts to regionalise this work by holding a series of in-depth training workshops with local partner organisations in El Salvador, Honduras, Dominican Republic (with Haitian participation) and in 2002 workshops will take place in Ecuador and Peru. Towards the end of 2001 ICD/CIIR bought three members of the group over to Europe to meet with practitioners working with male perpetrators of violence, gender and development organisations and community workers working with men. We held a very successful two-day conference in London entitled Men are Not From Mars: Gender and Non-Violence in Nicaragua and the Caribbean.. We have also published a manual, written by Patrick Welsh an ICD/CIIR development worker with the Association of Men Against Violence entitled Men Are Not From Mars: Unlearning Machismo in Nicaragua. This is available from [EMAIL PROTECTED] for �4.95. (It is also available in Spanish). The publication documents the work of the association to encourage men to examine and change their behaviour. It provides an in-depth account of the training courses on masculinity developed by the organisation, and the changes in men's attitudes, values and behaviour that ensued. Rather than accepting the idea that men and women come from 'different planets', participants in the courses are encouraged to focus on their own world: to examine and unlearn their own society's rules and expectations about being a man. Summaries of the proceedings of the conference are available on our website at www.ciir.org from the end of February. There will also be a conference report which will be published in April of this year, available from our sales address. Like others on the end violence network, I would appreciate hearing about experiences in different countries and cultures, and especially relevant for the work of ourselves and our partners is learning more about initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean. Annie Street Anne M Street Advocacy Coordinator, Latin America and the Caribbean International Co-operation for Development Catholic Institute for International Relations, Unit 3, Canonbury Yard, 190a New North Road, London N1 7BJ Tel: 020 7288 8608 (Direct) Tel: 020 7288 8600 (Switchboard) Fax: 020 7359 0017 Visit CIIR's all-new website: www.ciir.org to find out about our work on gender and masculinity ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
