Anand Pawar, India - My experiences, feelings and reflections about the Training of Trainers on Gender-sensitive Active Non-violence, The Netherlands.

Hi, I am Anand Pawar from SAMYAK in India. My friends who know that I am attending the Training on Gender Sensitive Active Nonviolence organized by the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, its Women Peacemakers Programme must be wondering how I’m doing. I’m more than happy to share some of my learning experiences.

Training of Trainers Experiences -
We are 19 men here from 17 different countries staying together for over a week now sharing our experiences in peacebuilding and working together with women’s groups in this.
It is incredible to connect with participants from so many different countries and backgrounds and to listen to women’s struggles in their countries; the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Cambodia, Philippines, Fiji, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, US, and the Netherlands.
We’re building a community of men working together with women as allies in peacebuilding.

The training is being facilitated by Patricia Ackerman, a feminist activist in the US and Steven Botkin of Men's Resources International. Their complementary way of working together is amazing and inspiring for me to observe. The training is highly informative with theories and practices of gender-sensitive active nonviolence and masculinity.

We also attended a conference in the Hague on women and peacebuilding, named 'The Second Dutch-Swedish Conference on Gender Equality: Women in War Zones' in The Hague. I gained a lot of strength from the sharing of ideas with women peacemakers from different countries, especially from Afghanistan and Liberia. I met Leymah Gbowee, the woman who mobilized the nonviolent peace movement in Liberia against the autocratic leadership. I also met the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of Slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, who informed us on UN advocacy mechanisms.

Learning and Contextualisation: How it informs my work at SAMYAK -
I have always focused on analyses of conflicts, militarization and cross-border tensions in South Asia, communal and caste-based violence in India and its linkage with construction of masculinities and culture of violence.
In my work with boys and men, I have been focusing on issues of masculinities in the context of violence against women, gender-based violence and sexuality. I have always felt that the understanding of men and masculinities in South Asian region needs to be examined beyond these issues. It needs to be contextualized in the contemporary realities of growing militarization, cross-border tensions and the spread of chauvinism, increasing fundamentalisms and notions of nationalisms. I have been grappling to incorporate these issues to address wider forms of violence in our dialogue with different sections of society.

This ToT has helped me to broaden my perspective on masculinities, from a gender sensitive active non violent point of view. Information on gender sensitive active non violence on both a theoretical and practical level has enriched my conceptual framework. I also learned a lot through the sharing of experiences and ideas with the other participants. This helped me to understand the world view on peace and nonviolence and its context to work with men and boys on masculinities from a feminist perspective.

Trying to contextualize what I have learned back to my own context, I am very happy to be connected to other participants from South Asia. With the participants from Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka I can discuss crucial issues related to the conflicts – their contexts and causes and nature - in the region. We discuss how we as men, and as allies of women, can take this training back to various processes in the region to be part of wider efforts towards gender justice and peace.

Follow up plans –
I have been working with male gender trainers both in my home state Maharashtra as well as nationally through our collective forum like Forum to Engage Men (FEM): Working with Men and Boys for Gender Equality. This is an active space and process in more than 15 provincial states of India. I will report what I learned in this training on gender sensitive active non violence back to this collective Forum and to the training workshops that I do for various groups.

I could organize follow-up trainings in different regions of India (North, East, South and West) with trainers and activists in civil society organizations and social justice movements, which in turn will work as trainers and advocates for active non-violence in their regions.

A comprehensive training programme for male gender trainers on gender-sensitive active nonviolence could be organized in South Asia and India every year. Participation for this could be invited through the process of applications with a stipulated shared contribution by the participants and organizations involved.

The development and dissemination of resource materials in regional languages would help to take these issues to the communities we work with. Also ongoing exchange activities would help to strengthen gender-sensitive active nonviolence activities and education in the region.

I feel privileged to be here. I have learned much on feminist theories and theories and practices of gender-sensitive active nonviolence. I feel deeply thankful to all the friends, women and men, FEM and feminist activists back home in India and IFOR/WPP, all the participants and facilitators of this ToT for providing space for critical reflections and raising my conscious as a man.