Case study: LIDERA
Case study: LIDERA, Liderazgos para las Democracias – región Andina (Bolivia, Perú, Chile) (Leadership for democracies in the Andean Region)
FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales), Chile.
Instituto de Defensa Legal – Perú,
Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios – Bolivia.
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LIDERA (Leaadership for democracies in the Andean Region) is an ongoing project that seeks to increase and strengthen leadership competencies and capabilities of 60 selected young women to develop varied policy advocacy projects in Bolivia, Perú and Chile. The main objective is that they develop policy advocacy skills and competences, in order to create, implement, and influence their own political, social and cultural processes of their countries.
During a 10 month period in LIDERA, these women who are civil society leaders, have participated in 3 training workshops in each country. They have acquired policy advocacy abilities, skills and competences to design and implement effective strategies and systematize and share their policy advocacy knowledge and experiences.
In this process the use Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) was considered as a key issue for their traning, as the internet and web resources are strategic tools for the coordination of their process of learning and for their advocacy practicest, including communication and information practices in their organisations. During their training process one of the goals has been specific training on the use and desing of blogs and web 2.0 tools. The project also offers them a website with access to news, contents and to an e-learning plattform: www.proyectolidera.org, where their blogs are also shown.
Challenges faced in the practice of technology
Facing the problems of democratic weakness and gender inequality that these three countries have, the project focus its attention on women civil society leaders, permitting them to design, implement, and evaluate their own policy advocacy strategies. The project addresses three countries that, while having distinct democratic systems, all face similar challenges in relation to strengthening civil society and the role of young women as public activists or political leaders. This includes the recognition that the access of women to technologies of information and communication is an important issue today, not only as consumers but as citizens.
From this perspective, LIDERA is a project that has a strong gender perspective in all the design and proposal of its learning and training programme. LIDERA has a feminist approach not so explicit, but the three organisations took ideas and guidelines from many of the feminist experiences and methodologies to improve the proposal and the training process.
Strategies and approaches:
The participants have received specific blog and web 2.0/open source tools applications from a team of trainers that includes the participation of Eiko Kawamura (from CEPES Perú for LIDERA Perú), Manuel Rebollo (from CEBEM for LIDERA Bolivia), Ricardo Barra (for LIDERA Chile) and Patricia Peña ( for LIDERA Chile and Bolivia). As you can notice, in the training team the project included both men and women, a fact that allows us to complement and enrich this experience. The training courses were developed in weeks 1 and 2 of the learning programme proposed in the three countries. They incorporated a theorical – practical approach that reviews aspects such as: the internet from a sociocultural vision, with its gender and ICT obstacles and opportunities; the strategic uses of internet for the work of their organisations, general aspects of cyberactivism, web 2.0 tools (blogs, social networking, basic free software and open source resources).
It was neccesary to consider that there were problems with access and conectivity, specially in Bolivia, but also with participants from Chile and Perú, showing us the differents aspects of the digital divide in these three countries. And in many cases, nor the participants nor their organisations had a good access to the internet network.
Precisely in this context, this training encouraged participants to develop and write as much as possible their own blogs during their participation in Lidera in order to:
1.challenge them to discover their own voice, vision and point of view as leaders and spokewomen;
2.help them to develop new competences to communicate and share information about their work and process for public advocacy;
3.share opinions and points of views about the differents topics and issues of their concern and interest;
4. appreciate all the possibilities that the web offers today to coordinate actions;
5.support the strategic planning of their advocacy work (promoting a strategic use of ICT) or of their organisation, and it’s envisioned/potential/present impact
A feminist approach to technology:
The project focused precisely on those deserving and visible women leaders who have developed actions – or have the potential to do so – for modifying the agendas of governments and other public or private organisations that design and put public policy into action. The consideration for selecting young women, was related to the aim of helping civil society organisations to achieve their desired impact and attain greater long-term sustainability with a new generation of leaders (lideresas in Spanish).
The challenge for the coordination team was also to see the ICT approach as an opportunity to work with a group of women that in general doesn´t have an intensive use of Internet, web tools and services to plan their communication strategies, to improve their daily work or to reinforce the connections with other networks.
It was also clear that it was an opportunity to show them as young leaders the importance of their responsability and the opportunity to participate as citizens and producers of contents in the ICT context. The methodology contained some basic guidelines, but every trainer had to adapt it to each group, according to its pace and context, and even offering a personalised extra hours of work when it was neccesary.
The feminist approach in the LIDERA case was very carefully considered by the coordination team in the 3 countries, because in Bolivia, Perú and Chile women in general have a small and poor participation in the blogosphere. In the case of Bolivia, the majority of the participants didn’t have regular or daily access to internet because they work in rural or remote areas where there´s not even electricity supply. Also in Bolivia, at least 3 of the participants had a basic level of education which made this learning experience more difficult.
In the cases of Perú and specially in Chile (where there are better conditions for access), some participants didn’t have good access and they weren´t regular network users. Although there wasn´t a pre-requisite to be a very good Internet user to attend the workshops, in the process we, as coordinator and training team, realized that many of them had very basic skills to use it. So we had the double challenge to try to improve they understanding of the web, it services, resources and tools and also to engage them in the idea of becoming producers of contents. This, of course, was complemented by another workshop that gave participants the basic skills in communication strategies. For many of them this was just the first step.
Story box:
Experience from Perú (by Eiko Kawamura, from CEPES, trainer of Lidera Perú)
The experience with training in information technology for development during the workshop LIDERA in Peru was very fruitful. Eight hours in total were exploited to the fullest. More than fifteen women from various cities in the country ended the workshop with the construction of its own blog and through them they were able to express their position on various political events.
As the trainer of this group of women I can say that I am satisfied and happy for the work accomplished with the women who started the workshop with different levels of ICT knowledge and ended motivated not only by the skills they obtained but also for the information and communication possibilities these tools offer to them.
One of the most interesting works is the one by Yamily Guerrero called “La Oroya, a city forgotten by the State (http://medidasenlaoroya.blogspot.com/)” where you can read posts about the situation of the population in La Oroya who suffered the consequences of pollution caused by the mining in the area.
Another example is the blog “Communication and Development” http://comunicandodesarrollo.blogspot.com/ conducted by Mirsa Ruiz Moran, who focused on public policies for youth in Peru. Both initiatives are a result of the ICT workshop for political impact in the framework of the LIDERA project.
Experience of Patricia Peña (ex coordinator of Lidera Project/Flacso Chile and trainer in Chile and Bolivia)
I have the double experience to work in this project as coordinator and trainer of this group of women in Chile and Bolivia. I can share that it has been an learning experience also for me, about the contexts and realities of participants, specially about what means to be a young woman leader in our civil society and more about what does it mean for a woman to become an e-communicator or better, a cyber-activist.
It was an extraordinary opportunity to share some of the knowledge we assume to have about using the internet and web tools to communicate and to work in a more strategic way in social networks. It was also an opportunity to observe how we approach information and communication technologies as women and how we get enthusiastic about producing content, getting involved in promoting their use in our own groups or communities and being more aware about obstacles and constrains in relation to access and participation.
I would like to highlight the blogs of some participants that to me are an example of the enthusiasm and effort in using this training to improve their work but also to visibilize their thoughs and daily experiences.
From Chile:
Mujeres y Espacios Públicos (Women and Public Spaces), a project that works in promoting women´s workers rights of street markets (by Cristina Valenzuela)
http://mujeryespaciopublico.blogspot.comhttp://mujeryespaciopublico.blog... http://mujeryespaciopublico.blogspot.com
WARMI (Women) LIDERA, a project that works by native aymara community in the north of Chile (by Cecilia Flores)
http://warmilidera.blogspot.comhttp://warmilidera.blogspot.com http://warmilidera.blogspot.com
Liliana Cheuquel´s Blog, a project that work with indigeous organisations of chilean Patagonia
http://lilya26.wordpress.comhttp://lilya26.wordpress.com http://lilya26.wordpress.com
Buta Wapi Chilwe, a project that promote the inclusion of indigenous- gender perspective in public health local services in the southern Island of Chiloe (by Miriam Torres)
http://mujerwilliche.blogspot.comhttp://mujerwilliche.blogspot.com http://mujerwilliche.blogspot.com
And in the case of Bolivia
Vamos Tarija, a project that promote young people participation (by Martha Ruiz)
http://vamostarija.blogspot.com
Jatunkillakasasanajaqis- Mujeres indígenas buscando su espacio, a project that focus the role of (Indigenous women seeking their social – political space, (by Jimena Jerónimo)
http://jatunkillakasasanajaqis.blogspot.comhttp://jatunkillakasasanajaqi... http://jatunkillakasasanajaqis.blogspot.com
We invite and encourage you to visit LIDERA ´s blog
www.proyectolidera.orgwww.proyectolidera.org www.proyectolidera.org
http://www.proyectolidera.org/participantes.phphttp://www.proyectolidera... http://www.proyectolidera.org/participantes.php
