Report on Second Capacity Building Workshop

Second Capacity Building Workshop on Gender, Trade Policy and Export Promotion: The Caribbean Region. Organised by the Gender Section of the Social Transformation Programmes Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat at Shaw Park Beach Hotel, Cutlass Bay, Ocho Rios, Jamaica 23 – 27 January 2006.

Introduction

Background

The Gender Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat has been focusing on issues related to budgets, the multilateral trading system and globalisation. In order to move from analysis to action and to embed and build capacity in various regions to address these issues, the Secretariat is seeking to mainstream gender and trade in relevant institutions and organisations at regional and national level in the Commonwealth countries.

As a first step in this process the Secretariat has started to develop a generic training module on gender and trade. While there is a core module, the effort is to build a regional perspective. A design workshop to ascertain training needs was held in February 2005 in Kampala Uganda with stakeholders from government ministries and other public and private institutions. This was followed by a regional workshop in East Africa which covered Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in July 2005.

The second workshop was held in Jamaica in January 2006 to cover the Caribbean region.

The overall purpose of the training module is

• To build capacity to integrate gender analysis in trade policy formulation and implementation
• To analyse impacts of trade policy on women’s employment and entrepreneurship
• To focus on region specific issues and trends and impacts on women
• To build capacity of public and private institutions to enable women to respond to changes in trade policy

This report is both a record of the workshop for those who took part in it, and an account for dissemination to others to show what the workshop achieved, summarise its content, activities and learning outcomes, and share experiences.

Participants

There were participants from Barbados, Jamaica and St Lucia at the Jamaica workshop. Participants from Guyana were unable to attend. Each country was represented by a team comprised of policy makers from relevant ministries and organisations, private sector business organisations and women’s networks. Organisations represented included trade ministries, ministries of women’s affairs, sectoral ministries, export promotion councils and civil society organisations. There were also representatives from regional and international organisations.

The course team consisted of facilitators and resource people for the workshop: Mariama Williams, Jacqui MacDonald and Dorienne Rowan Campbell (consultants) and Sarojini Ganju Thakur of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The programme assistant was Justina Mutale, of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Catherine Atthill, instructional designer responsible for developing a training resource based on the workshop, also attended. (See Appendix 1 for details of participants and course team.)

Programme

The workshop lasted five days. It combined theoretical background and knowledge-based presentations with practical group activities. The country teams also worked together to produce a project presentation and action plan on the final day. Appendix 2 contains the programme for the week.