Together for our Future: Gender Sensitive Communication for Community Initiatives

Organization Name: Chasquinet and Colinas del Norte

[Latin America and Caribbean - Ecuador]

Chasquinet used GEM to support planning and evaluation of a unique participatory community telecentre initiative in Colinas del Norte, located in the mountains that surround Quito, 3,100 mts high, and considered a "model community" by municipal authorities. Communication is one of the areas where the community has decided to focus their work. In order to do so, a group of young people were appointed to be responsible for this task. However teen-aged women’s participation in this project is not as active or as desired mainly because of cultural prejudices.
GEM provided a framework for analysis of the community communication strategies, and how to incorporate a gender perspective in it. Through the GEM evaluation process, several gender sensitisation workshops were conducted in the community. One of Chasquinet's evaluation outputs is a manual for working at telecentres and popular communications projects using GEM.