Social change program
AFE’s Social Change Program is a year-long program that provides individuals, groups and/or organizations in the Arab World with both theoretical and practical training in the areas of gender, sexuality, and organizing for social change .
Program Aims
There are numerous individuals starting to organize across the region around gender and sexual rights and freedoms. The overall objective of the program is to address the need for a strong civil society working on issues of gender and sexuality by creating highly informed and motivated leaders who will affect social change within their communities. The program will do so by:
- Integrating theory and practice in thematic areas
- Providing opportunities for peer learning
- Creating venues for inter-regional exchange
- Coordinating thematic internships within the region
- Facilitating a mentorship program
How The Program Works:
Participants from across the MENA region apply to the program and participate in the different aspects of the program:
There are a total of six training modules spread out over one year in two month intervals. Participants attend three required modules and choose at least one and at most two of the optional modules.
Participants may apply for one of three internships. Each internship is a 6-8 week long program with an organization working in a field of the participant’s interest.
A participant may request a mentor to work with on particular learning objectives in either a short term (4- 6 months) or long term period (8-12 months). Mentors are experienced activists based in MENA and working in a variety of fields. Mentorships begin after the completion of the third required module.
Each participant is required to complete at least one small project related to gender and/or sexuality rights. Participants will be able to access a small grant of up to US$ 500 to execute the project.
The program is conducted in Arabic, however some materials may be presented in English as well.
AFE has produced original training material in for its social change program. The material is licensed under creative commons, and can be accessed here (link to training materials).
Eligibility
Individuals from and/or residing in the Arab world and working or beginning to work on sexual and bodily rights, and/or gender equality in any field are eligible to apply.
Security and protection
AFE takes a compressive approach in working with nascent sexual rights activists across MENA, which includes development of security and protection programs for activists at risk because of the work that they do.
The program aims to support activists and building their capacity in the area of security and protection by:
1) publishing guides for five high-priority MENA countries, identifying legal and social instruments used to violate the human rights of individuals with alternative sexual identities, as well as legal and social instruments that can be used to counter these violations,
2) Providing capacity building trainings through one of the SCP modules, ensuring activists understand how to conduct risk assessments, and craft security plans based on those assessments,
3) Adapting a security and protections handbook, localizing it to a MENA context, and publishing it through sexual and bodily rights networks across the region, and
4) Documenting human rights abuses against individuals with alternative sexualities when possible, and building the capacity of activists to use such documentation for advocacy purposes.
Emergency response
AFE is the MENA coordinator of the world's only human rights defender fund for activists working on sexual and bodily rights and gender-equality. Activists have access to an emergency helpline. AFE provides fast emergency intervention for activists in danger. This will be funded by heartland alliance
Refugee program
AFE launched a protection program for LGBT individuals and victims of gender-based violence, and refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, by building an LGBT, gender and PLWH friendly referral system, in these two countries, along with offering livelihood support. In 2011 AFE launched a capacity building program for NGOs working with refugees enabling them to work with LGBT refugees and refugees who are victims of gender based violence.
Resource Center
The vision behind the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center is to aggregate resources and research produced in the region about gender, sexuality and HIV/AIDS to make this information widely available by being online—with a firm emphasis on Arabic-language materials. The project will kick off by mapping and analyzing research trends and identify gaps in research and knowledge production. After which the center will be focusing on publishing, aggregating, translating and producing knowledge as it related to the MENA region and Gender and Sexuality. In order to ensure ease of access AFE’s Center will provide access to materials through the online Center and when possible in the physical library. The center will build and collaborate with partner organizations, other resources and research centers and bodies. Egypt will be one of our major focal points of the research as it holds a massive amount of research and is one of the places where the research has seen movement in the last 10 years.
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