Esther Karnley and Marian Rogers have dedicated their lives to activism for women's rights, protection, empowerment, and the prevention of violence. They both got their start in Liberia, but have held a myriad of positions in their combined 43 years of experience in this field. Listen to them talk about the beginnings of this movement in the humanitarian space, their lessons, their advice, and their hopes for the future.

A special thank you to Megan O'Brien for production support on this episode.

In this episode, we talk about a report issued by International Rescue Committee that looks at the humanitarian response to COVID-19 and its effect on women and girls. We're joined by three contributors to the report, Caroline Mwanki, Ilaria Michelis, and Nancy Abwola who discuss how the pandemic has affected the safety women and girls in emergencies in their day to day lives and the need for increased accountability. To read the full report, visit https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/5281/ircwpecovidreportv6.pdf

This is the fourth in our series called Staff Spotlight. In this episode, we're highlighting the work of Tizita Tekletsadik, Child Protection and GBV Survivor Specialist in International Rescue Committee's Violence Prevention and Response unit. In her career, she's been a lawyer, and author, a project manager, among other titles. Listen to hear about her career trajectory, what challenges she see for emerging activists and her aspirations for this sector.

This episode we talk Climate Change - the current state of things, the impact on humanitarian contexts and on women and girls, and climate action we can take. Tara Clerkin, Senior Agriculture Coordination in Climate and Partnerships, and Charlotte Collins, a climate change researcher and intern at IRC, tell us all about the right vocabulary and the role of women and girls as change agents.

Communication should be purposeful in its delivery of information that brings awareness to a topic, betters our understanding, and incites action. But communicating about violence against women and girls comes with unique challenges. How we are communicating about new trends in this field, projects we’re piloting, and the impacts of our programs? And how do we do that in the right way that gets the right attention? Nicole Smith, Senior Global Communications Officer at IRC, joins us for this episode to help us think like a comms person.

*If you're at IRC, and want to reach out to Nicole with comms ideas, connect with her at nicole [dot] smith at rescue [dot] org.

With COVID-19 travel and working restrictions, many IRC country programs are shifting to digital modalities for remote staff training. In this episode, Kristy Crabtree shifts roles from host to interviewee in order to provide practical guidance on how to adapt training from in-person to remote settings. Learn how to identify and overcome barriers, engage participants, design a training that makes the most of available technology, and implement remote trainings in low resource settings or where there are mobility constraints.

In this episode, we're dedicating space to talk about the realities for women and girls and GBV programs when it comes to Covid-19. Everywhere where IRC operates from Lesvos, Greece, to Al Hol, Syria, to Turkana, Kenya, to Mae Sot, Thailand, to NY, USA has been affected. We a global round table, we talked about risks to women and adolescent girls, how are program are adapting, what resources are available, and how this is changing norms.

Here are the resources referenced in this episode:

- Women and Girls Safe Spaces: Technical Guidance Note for COVID-19 -IRC, IMC, NCA: https://gbvaor.net/sites/default/files/2020-04/WGSS%20Technical%20Guidance%20Note%20.pdf

- GBVIMS, Case Management and COVID-19: http://www.gbvims.com/covid-19/

We are reposting this episode from 2018 at at time that could not be more relevant. With the covid-driven programmatic adaptations happening everywhere and many shifting towards the use of digital technology because of social distancing and mobility constraints, it's more important than ever that we are acknowledging the massive digital gender gap, not making assumptions about access, and planning for remote adaptations that are inclusive and not harmful to women and girls in humanitarian settings

In 2017, we conducted a research project in Lebanon to answer several key questions: what are women and girls’ access to mobile phones and the Internet, what are the barriers to their access (real and perceived), and what are their desired uses and safety concerns? In working with potentially vulnerable populations such as forcibly displaced women and girls, is mobile technology the appropriate channel for communication, service provision, information dissemination, awareness raising, and empowerment activities? In this episode, we discussed the reason we conducted this research and our findings and recommendations, including safety planning, planning for shared use of mobile devices, and community assessments, among others.

*

*

*

*

If you want to read the research findings, search for Safety planning for technology: displaced women and girls’ interactions with information and communication technology in Lebanon and harm reduction considerations for humanitarian settings in the Journal of International Humanitarian Action or visit jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/articl…0031-x

What we measure and the way we measure it has significant impacts on our programming. In this episode, Kelsey Simmons and Michelle Wong, both M&E specialists at IRC, walk us through the meaning of a feminist approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning. They discuss how does that work practically in humanitarian settings and through the project cycle.

Resources referenced in the podcast (and a few extras):

- We All Count https://weallcount.com/

- Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment https://crea.education.illinois.edu/

- Data Feminism https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism

- American Evaluation Association Feminist Issues in Evaluation https://comm.eval.org/feministissuesinevaluation/home

- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

- Feminist Evaluation and Research: Theory and Practice. Edited by Sharon Brisolara, Denise Seigart, and Saumitra SenGupta. New York: The Guilford Press, 2014.

- Feminist Evaluation: Explorations and Experiences. Edited by Sharon Brisolara and Denise Seigart. New Directions for Evaluation, no. 96, 2002.

- Seigart, Denise. “Feminist Evaluation.” By Denise Seigart. Encyclopedia of Evaluation, ed. Sandra Mathison. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005.

- “Feminist Evaluation and Gender Approaches: There’s a Difference?” By Donna R. Podems. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 6:14, 2010.

- “Capturing changes in women's lives: the experiences of Oxfam Canada in applying feminist evaluation principles to monitoring and evaluation practice.” By Carol Miller and Laura Haylock. Gender & Development, 22:2, 2014.

Programs evolve over time, especially in our work with specific populations. In this episode, we walk through that process with Farah Salhab, the manager of the adolescent girl's program in Lebanon, to see how their program evolved from a stand-alone initiative to a core part of IRC's Women's Protection and Empowerment programming model, and all with girls' voices driving the process.