SPARK in partnership with Seaoil Foundation Inc. (SFI) and the Quezon City Office of the Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte conducted the LIPAD Pinay (Local Inclusiveness Project for the Advancement and Development of Filipino Women) Module 1: Bridging Leadership x Gender and Development last June 21-22, 2017 at the Quezon City Hall.

Module 1 commenced with a short program that aims to reinforce and enhance the commitment of the beneficiaries towards achieving the project goals. Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte expressed her delight over the support of the project partners and encouraged her constituents to make use of this opportunity for progress and development. Ms Victoria Garchitorena, SPARK Founding Trustee and Gender and Development Champion, highlighted the economic empowerment objective of the program. She mentioned that LikhangPilipina! SPARK Women’s Marketplace is open for the women’s group in their barangays, a platform where they can develop and market their products. Mr Randy Cacho, Program Manager of Seaoil Foundation Inc. (SFI), reaffirmed the foundation’s commitment in ensuring the success of the program and will provide assistance to the best they can.

32 barangay officials from 8 barangays in Quezon City working together towards a gender-responsive leadership and governance and women’s economic empowerment in the grassroots level. The 32 participants are members of Barangay Gender Focal Point System (GFPS) that serve as governing body when it comes to Gender and Development (GAD).

Module 1 is facilitated by Dr. Sherwin Pontanilla, SFI Program Manager. He began the training with the session on Establishing Inequities, it identified problems specifically on gender disparities that are existent in their communities and the acknowledgment that these problems hinders growth and therefor in dire need of solution.

The 2nd session delved into self-awareness and introducing the concept of ownership; developing a sense of personal Ownership of a societal problem and the response to it. The concept of Theory U was introduced; a change management method that will be vital in their roles as public servants to break through past unproductive practices and behaviors that cause development to stagnate.

DELEGATES FROM BARANGAYS ACTIVELY PARTICIPATED TO THE DAY 1 TRAINING

In the 3rd session, participants were asked to write their leadership journey through their life story which seeks to discover their personal motivation through understanding their own stories. They were able to share it with their groupmates and incite a fruitful discussion about themselves and journey. Their life story articulates their life purpose and what makes them authentic leaders.

The last session of Day 1 gives emphasis on Systems Thinking. Based on real-to-life case shown by Dr. Pontanilla, the participants are made to realize that the issue is not a result of a simple cause and effect relationship but there are contributory factors that leads to the inequity.

Day 2 of Module 1 commenced with a workshop on demystifying and deconstructing Sex and Gender facilitated by Anwedda Navarra, SPARK Project Officer. An introductory session using the Magna Carta of Women (MCW) as the guiding document.

The workshop led to 5th session on Understanding Gender and Development (GAD) through the Roadmap and Scorecard, facilitated by the Program Manager of LIPAD Pinay: Hamilcar Chanjueco Jr. The roadmap will be the guide to achieve gender-responsiveness of the barangays based on 3 main blocks: Leadership and Governance, GAD Education, and GAD Project, Activities, and Programs (PAPs). A scorecard was developed to assess the development of their GAD, it was loosely patterned after the Philippine Commission on Women’s Gender Mainstreaming Evaluation Framework (GMEF) and the Department of Interior and Local Governance (DILG) health scorecard.

Coming off from the session on Theory U, Kimberly Tiburcio, SFI Project Coordinator of LIPAD Pinay, facilitated the succeeding session on current reality and preferred reality. The roadmap is colored red, yellow and green to depict the current reality of the barangay when it comes to Gender and Development. The barangay leaders were able to identify where the greater need is.

To concretize the theories and principles of Bridging Leadership, the last session is directed towards Action Planning facilitate by Dr. Pontanilla. The concepts of Equality vs Equity, Bridging Leadership’s Ownership Theory U, Systems Thinking, and GAD were all synthesize and integrated to their Leadership Development Plan.

The participants were given “assignments” to be accomplished in the next 4 weeks of practicum which will lead to the 2nd module of LIPAD Pinay which is set on 26-27 July 2017.