Week 3

Esquel offers training for it's staff and I was invited to two trainings during this week. The trainings were not only for Esquel staff but for 15 civil society organizations. This is because the foundation has other project that works on the capacitation and strengthening of civil society organizations.

The first training had to do with gender mainstreaming and the second one with management of social media for civil society organizations. Both trainings were very good and I was able to revisit some material that is always important to have present.

The training about gender mainstreaming mainly highlighted the importance of doing an autodiagxosis to every organization.

"If your organization is promoting gender equality, the work of gender equality should be visible and real in your organization". Intersectionality immediately sparked here, how gender is an intrinsic part of power structures. Are we aware of the intersection of gender and race in our organizations? Do we still have remains of patriarchy in our working spaces? This are questions that the facilitator promoted among the participant civil society organizations.

The training about social media for civil society organizations focussed mainly on reputation, on making some social causes sexier, on accountability and on how can business be integrated with social causes. Linking the importance of a social cause to the core of a business was stressed. An example that had great impact on the heads of the civil society organizations was the Ariel campaign in India. Ariel, is a cleaning product and its #ShareTheLoad campaign promoting gender equality was great success. In the training they explained a civil society organization allied with Ariel in order to create awareness in India and it was a success. The example was perfect and the participants civil society organizations were inspired and started thinking of proposals for different business sectors that could work with them.

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