For recent news, publications and reports, visit the Banúlacht Update.  
 
 
Welcome
 April 2012

Banúlacht Closure

31st March 2012

On February 15th the Executive Committee of Banúlacht took the very difficult decision to close Banúlacht with effect from March 31st. This decision was taken because of a number of factors that have combined to make it impossible to continue to do our work according to our feminist ethos.

Banúlacht was founded in 1990 and over the years our work was funded by many different funders. Our focus on linking the local and global, our feminist ethos and our role within the women’s community development sector has never been easy for funders to categorise, and this, in parallel with a changing funding environment, has meant that maintaining a diverse funding base has always been a struggle. In spite of all our efforts to access funding from other sources, the organisation had been funded only by Irish Aid and Trócaire since 2009. From 2009 -2011 our funding was reduced by 52% in total. Trócaire, after consistently funding the organisation for 20 years, declined to fund Banúlacht in 2011. This withdrawal of funding left Banúlacht more financially vulnerable and dependent on Irish Aid.

At a policy level, over the last few years there has been a marked shift in Irish Aid’s approach away from an understanding of development education as facilitating activism to its current position in the 2012 development education guidelines which stipulates that funding cannot be used for campaigning and advocacy work.

Since its foundation, Banúlacht, in consultation with women’s organisations in Ireland and the global South, has worked to facilitate the engagement of grassroots women and women’s community development organisations in advocating for the realisation of women’s human rights at local, national and international levels. This ethos, defined in our Feminist Principles and our Strategic Plan, underpinned all our work. Dependence on Irish Aid, in the absence of other sources of funding that could be used for more critical policy focused work, effectively required us to abandon the advocacy and activist dimensions of our work and our ethos as a feminist organisation.

After much deliberation and with a heavy heart, Banúlacht decided that compromising our feminist principles for the sake of funding went against the integrity of the organisation and our mission and vision. We therefore decided not to apply for Irish Aid funding, which meant the closure of Banúlacht on March 31st.

After 22 years of feminist global solidarity work, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our feminist sisters, members and friends for the solidarity expressed at this time. We wish you all the very best in your continued work for the realisation of women’s human rights locally and globally.

Mná Sasa!

Banúlacht

We are a feminist development education organisation.


Launch of Mná Sasa by Banúlacht and Kivulini Women’s Rights Organisation, during Banúlacht’s ExChange Visit to Mwanza, Tanzania, November 2010. (For more about the 2010 and previous ExChange visits, click here and here. [February and March 2011]).

Read Banúlacht’s Strategic Plan 2011-2014 and Feminist Principles document. View a slideshow about Banúlacht’s work.

We work through:

  • Conferences, workshops and seminars on economic literacy, gender, development and human rights. Our most recent training course, From Local to Global: Grassroots Women Sustaining the Women’s Movement, was held in May/June 2010 in partnership with the National Collective of Community Based Women's Networks.



  • Mary Rusimbi of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme with participants at the 2010 training course with the NCCWN.

    To read about our most recent conference, Violence Against Women A Global Crisis: Accountability—Activism—Action, which was organised in partnership with the Clare and Limerick Women’s Networks, click here. For more on our conferences, click here.
     

  • Training and capacity building in the community development sector in Ireland. Courses include foundation level and more advanced courses in Gender and Development, Women's Human Rights as our popular economic literacy course, 'Looking at the Economy through Women's Eyes'.
     
  • ExChange - Exchange programmes with women's organisations in the global South.  Banúlacht has an ongoing exchange programme with the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme and Kivulini Women’s Rights Organisation. Two exchange visits to Tanzania by women from community development organisations in Ireland have been organized (2007 and 2008). A return visit by women from the Tanzanian organisations was held in 2009. A further exchange visit to Tanzania took place in November 2010. A radio documentary by Niamh Farren, one of the participants, called, 'Voices of Tanzania', based on the exchange, which can be heard here. For reports and photos of the visit, see see Banúlacht Gender and Development Bulletin 7 (February 2010), Issue 5 (March 2009) and Issue 3 (December 2007) or visit the Banúlacht Update.

  •  
  • Research and policy work on development policy from a feminist perspective.
     
  • Publication of briefing papers, newsletters, reports and training resources.
 
Banúlacht’s Models of Practice series
Banúlacht’s Models of Practice series documents how Banúlacht’s practice reflects our ethos, values, principles and theoretical framework. Through this documentation, we aim to share our way of working, acknowledge the sources and influences of our work and inform our ongoing development and monitoring and evaluation processes. In doing so, we also aim to map and claim Banúlacht’s “DNA”—the specific ethos and practice that characterises our way of working.

The complete series of five models of practice consists of:

I: Banúlacht: A Feminist Development Education Organisation in Global Solidarity

II: Banúlacht’s Feminist Empowerment and Feminist Solidarity Approach to Development Education

III: Feminist Solidarity in Action: The ExChange Programme

IV: Banúlacht’s Policy Model: A Critical Feminist Approach to Gender and Development Policy

V: Feminists in Community Development: The Mná Sasa Manifesto


Banúlacht Economic
Literacy publication

Looking at the Economy through Women’s Eyes: A facilitators’ guide for Economic Literacy

Based on Banúlacht’s experience of developing and delivering Economic Literacy Training, the facilitator’s guide is a compilation of resources and activities which have been tried and developed through interaction with these women. It begins with an introduction to Economic Literacy, which lays the foundation for Banúlacht’s approach.

“A powerful tool in that it will enable any learner to enter into the discourse of neo-liberalisation with confidence." -- Aontas Adult Learner Journal

>> Click here for more details <<

>> To download a PDF version of this document, click here. <<

 
Notices
NEW PUBLICATION

Economic Alternatives for Gender and Social Justice: Voices and Visions from India and Latin America (2011)
by Christa Wichterich and Patricia Muńoz Cabrera. This briefing paper is based on two earlier publications by WIDE (Women in Development Europe): In Search of Economic Alternatives for Gender and Social Justice: Voices from India and Economic Alternatives for Gender and Social Justice: Voices and Visions from Latin America. The paper highlights some of the alternative feminist development models to the neo-liberal model which are being practised by women across Latin America and India. To download it, click here.
NEW REPORT FROM IRISH AID

Irish Aid have published their Annual Monitoring Report on Gender Equality 2010. The monitoring report, prepared by Irish Aid Gender Network, provides ‘an overview of key highlights, results and learning’ from 2010. It revisits the policy goals of the Irish Aid Gender Equality Policy, highlighting examples of gender equality work from various Partner countries and outlines priorities for 2011/12. The report can be downloaded by clicking here.
Justice Still Out of Reach for Millions of Women, UN Women Says

Flagship report from the UN’s new organization for women recognizes progress, but calls on governments to take urgent action to end the injustices that keep women poorer and less powerful than men in every country in the world. For the UN Women press release, click here. For the full report, Progress of the World’s Women: In Pursuit of Justice, click here.
NEW REPORT

The Cost of Gender Equality vs. Losses in Monetary Terms and Human Fulfillment of Women and Girls with Gender Inequality. To download the report, click here.


WORLD'S WOMEN & GIRLS

Two new reports highlight the current situation of women and girls and the barriers to the elimination of discrimination worldwide.

The World's Women 2010: Trends and Statistics
highlights the differences in the status of women and men in eight areas – population and families, health, education, work, power and decision-making, violence against women, environment and poverty. While progress towards gender equality has been made in some areas, the report shows that much more needs to be done to close the gender gap in critical areas such as power and decision-making and violence against women. To read the full 284-page report, click here.

World's Women & Girls 2011 Data Sheet
has the latest data on a wide variety of indicators on the socioeconomic status of women and girls in more than 180 countries, with a focus on demography, reproductive health, education, work, and public life. A special section on overcoming barriers to gender equality is also featured. Click here for the data sheet and other resources.
NEW GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN

Banúlacht Gender and Development Bulletin Issue 9 (Spring 2011) is now available. This issue features the Mná Sasa Manifesto, a new Banúlacht solidarity initiative. There are also reports by Irish and Tanzanian women involved in the Banúlacht Exchange November 2010. Finally, we report on UN Women, the new United Nations gender equality agency, and feature a position document by the African Feminist Forum. Click here to download the Bulletin.

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