Guest Writer
Stella Atwongyeirwe
Posted 28/07/2023
“We can work together as groups or choose to work together as communities, either way there are repercussions,” Harriet Tugume, Danie Consult.
Today the 28th of July 2023, Graca Machel Uganda Networks held a debrief workshop to close off activities of the first part of the Women Leadership and Financial Inclusion project, dubbed Pathway1 and to usher in the second part dubbed Pathway2. This was at Hotel Africana in Kampala.
Pathwas two is a continuation of the Women Leadership and Financial Inclusion project which started in 2022.
Its main objectives include:
• To advocate for gender inclusive COVID-19 economic recovery strategies that put women at the centre of the economic response and promotes accountability for policy action.
• To build a critical mass of African women leaders in key economic sectors, who have the confidence and skills to exercise their agency and representation to advance women’s financial inclusion.
• To enhance the participation of women in financial regulatory policy making through strengthening women’s Networks that elevate the collective voices of African women to improve women’s financial inclusion.
Harriet Tugume one of the resource persons commended GMT networks for coming together and said that they must work towards building a community rather than just being a group of women. “To become a community you must have common objectives, you must work together, you must have shared values and you must do things together,” she said. “When one says you are part of his community, it is different from when he says you live in their neighbourhood,” she emphasised.
Women who participated in the workshop underscored the need for all government sectors to consider gender equity in the distribution of roles in services delivery taskforces. Key among the taskforces mentioned were the covid 19 taskforces at all levels, from National to village level. They continued to demand for at least 40% women’s representation on Covid 19 task forces. Hope Kasimbabazi, of Private sector Foundation reminded participants, that although the focus was covid 19, all sectors need to be pushed because lobbying in piecemeal is not very effective sometimes.
“Now that we have pathway2, lets use it to lobby for at least 40% in all sectors. Today it is covid19, tomorrow it will be Ebola, the next day it will be something else. We need to build a lobbying approach that will put women in sectors equitably” Hope ephasised. Hope is an entrepreneur with
In order for GMT networks to scale up advocacy work, Pathway 2 is mainly dedicated to building communities that will work together to achieve desired goals. Among the activities the networks are tasked to identify champions to work with. These should be people of high integrity in society and they should be willing to be part of the process. Christine Muyama, the Advocacy Officer at GMT, pledged support on behalf of GMT and said that they would support advocacy activities especially those driven by Champions.
“In building supportive community we shall need champions to drive the agenda. We cannot pay the champions but we can facilitate them to do advocacy work,” she said.
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