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The Ministry of Rural Development and IWWAGE jointly organized a two-day
Consultative Workshop on Gender Resource Centre

The Ministry of Rural Development and IWWAGE jointly organized a two-day Consultative Workshop on Gender Resource Centre in New Delhi on 27th and 28th July 2023. In his keynote address, Shri Charanjit Singh Additional Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development mentioned that since 2016, DAY NRLM has targeted intervention for mainstreaming gender within the program with the goal to strengthen the voice, choice and agency of women. To respond to the issues of gender specific entitlements and rights, a need was felt for establishing a structure like Gender Resource Centre to find resolution for a varied range of complex cases that demand inter linkages with other departments.

Setting the context for the workshop, Smt. Smriti Sharan, Joint Secretary, shared that the DAY-NRLM has initiated a silent revolution in the country and that its transformative approach is premised on the principles of creating women led and women owned institutions. She shared the two basic principles of the DAY-NRLM program are social empowerment and economic empowerment of the rural poor women. Joint Secretary further stated that the establishment of GRC has been a landmark achievement for the program reaffirming DAY-NRLMs commitment to the mandate of women empowerment. Ms. Sharon Buteau, Executive Director of LEAD at Krea University underscored the importance of evidence generation in identifying key elements for interventions.

 

 

A total of 75 participants from 15 states along with CSO partners and gender experts participated in the workshop. The deliberations in the workshop highlighted the major components for strengthening Gender Resource Centre through a participatory group work. The enriching experiences from the participating State viz. Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Nagaland, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Kerala, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tripura re-emphasizes the efforts that are required for strengthening the Gender Resource Centre in the country.

 

The closing remarks by Joint Secretary, Smt Smriti Sharan, laid out that the discussions have helped us reflect on the present scope of the GRC and ambit of work that lay in front of us. She also added that if GRCs are envisioned as the apex body of the community institutions at the Block level, then its role should also be of higher order. She also laid emphasis on the fact that it is much larger than just addressing cases- it is about combatting gender inequality through a holistic approach.