Meet the Teams: Gender Equity and Diversity Training

CARE’s bold vision and 2020 program strategy is a call for transformative change. Its success comes down to our core asset: people. We can design the most advanced technology and cutting edge program strategies, but ultimately, our impact is dependent on people— our staff and partners—to implement them successfully. We will reach short of our impact goals if we do not fully equip our staff and partners to address unconscious bias and negotiate diversity and power in their lives and work.

CARE has an incredible solution to address this problem: our Gender Equity and Diversity training. And yet, we have failed to fully scale it and tap the full potential of our staff. When CARE walks the talk on gender equity and diversity (GED), we not only bring legitimacy and authenticity to our engagement with communities and advocacy with stakeholders, but we also increase performance, inspire creative solutions, and build more trusting, effective partnerships with others. CARE’s GED trainings equip participants with communication tools, self-awareness and sensitivity to the context of others by building awareness of one’s own values, beliefs, biases and privileges across varying lines of diversity (gender, age, class, ethnicity, work style) and how they change in different contexts. Done in a group setting, individuals build deeper understanding of their peers as well.

The training also connects the experiential training exercises with program design and implementation, inspiring staff to think about how they engage with communities, stakeholders and power-holders, and partner with others in ways that change power dynamics and support vibrant social and feminist movements globally. For example, in CARE Uganda, trained staff went on to train local partner staff and have added GED methodologies into programming, which they cite as critical to their advocacy and rights work with disenfranchised communities.

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Meet the Team

Kassie McIlvaine | Manager – Gender, Equity and Diversity Solutions | CARE USA

Kassie McIlvaine has 20 years of experience as a manager of non-profit organisation in post-conflict environments, strong leadership and change management skills, promotes innovation in design, monitoring and evaluation so that impact and change can happen. She has  passion for addressing gender, equity and diversity in the organisation but also in programming.

Theresa Hwang | Gender Director | CARE USA

Theresa Hwang provides strategic guidance for integrating gender into program design, implementation, M&E across diverse technical programming areas, and creates supportive organizational policies & practices on gender and diversity. She is a highly skilled trainer and facilitator on gender programming and mainstreaming. Theresa has designed and managed multi-country initiatives utilizing participatory action research and learning, focusing on gender equality, child marriage, GBV, HIV prevention, and engaging men and boys. Prior to CARE, she has worked with Doctors of the World in Sri Lanka, and the Global Fund for Women. She holds an MPA from Princeton University.

Kalkidan Lekaw | GED Officer | CARE Ethiopia

Kalkidan Lekaw is passionate and dedicated to changing the world with women having more opportunities. She is responsible for addressing gender, equity and diversity issues within the organisation of CARE Ethiopia and focuses on capacity building, policy development and creating space and opportunities.

Walter Fordham | Senior GED Advisor | CARE USA

Walter Fordham is a high energy Organizational Development (OD) Professional with over 23 years of successful and progressive experience. He has proven expertise in group facilitation, training, agenda design, organizational development and employee relations and an effective leader with cultural sensitivity, exceptional facilitation and coaching skills, and strong employee development. He has demonstrated ability to develop and maintain a high level of rapport with all levels of employees.

Rose Amulen | WE Coordinator | CARE Uganda

Rose Amulen has over 13 years experience working in the field of development, gender and peace building, particularly focusing on gender mainstreaming, capacity-building, and participatory development. She also has hands on experience working with highly vulnerable people including internally displaced persons, refugees, victims of war, rape and trauma, and people with disabilities. Rose has strong skills in project design, implementation and evaluation, proposal writing and formation of partnerships and collaborations.

Nancy Bryan | GED Facilitator | CARE USA

Nancy Bryan has 29 years of experience at CARE in human resources and supporting the capacity development of staff and teams. She is a GED trainer and is passionate about building a network and taking these trainings to scale

 

 

Meet the Teams: Core To Care: Get the Land Right

Through the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST) project, CARE Tanzania has piloted a participatory and innovative approach to measure land plots through a mobile application technology. The software was developed by the private US company Cloudburst and was piloted in three villages, funded by USAID. The project was introduced to government officials both at the national and the local level before implementation. Over a period of 3 weeks the application mapped 910 land plots and the same number of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) were issued to villagers. Out of these 31% were issued to individual women. Another 3% was co-owned by women and 13% was issued to couples. The remaining 53% was for men. These percentages of land being accessed by women are much higher than the national average of land titles owned by women (around 20%). This provides evidence that land registration can be executed in a relatively short period of time in a way that takes into account land rights of women. The sofware application simplifies the land registration process; it is an easy-to-use, open-source smartphone application that facilitates mapping by trained young villagers (girls and boys) verification by village land adjudication committees. It is also low cost, transparent and time effective. The methodology is five times faster than manual mapping and three times faster than the methodology which uses conventional GPS technology. Watch this video to learn more!

 

Jane Mgone | Coordinator, Knowledge Sharing and Learning | CARE Tanzania

Jane Mgone started with CARE in 2014 and currently Learning plays a key role in supporting CARE to achieve its new business model by 2020 through enhancing knowledge sharing and learning so that CARE can be more innovative and improve communication.  As a  coordinator, she is at the center of communication and information lines within the organization and interfaces with other departments to improve the use of modern technology and software as well as to conduct research regarding learning methodologies, best practices, and innovative opportunities. Jane has received a Masters of International Relations from the University of Leicester, and she has over five years of experience in the Department Sector with a focus on knowledge management and communications.

Mustapha Issa | Program Coordinator | CARE Tanzania

Mustapha Issa started working with CARE in 2015 and works coordinating initial project mobilization with the Government of Tanzania (GoT) and other stakeholders.  As Program Coordinator, he is responsible for conducting outreach and public awareness related to land rights, organizing training courses, and building capacity with regard to the key land laws and legal processes related to the formalization of land rights in the Iringa district. He is an engineer and environmentalist with five years of experience in Geographic Information System (GIS) and land surveying.

Thabit Masoud | Director Technical Unit, Natural Resources and Climate Change | CARE Tanzania

Thabit Masoud is a forester with MS degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Kent and Canterbury. Thabit has coordinated various projects and programs cultivating forest conservation and development thinking and has over 20 years of experience working with government and for CARE in overseeing and coordinating natural resources management projects and programs, with a more recent focus on community based adaptation and resilience against climate shock.

Shelina Mallozzi | Deputy Country Director | CARE Tanzania

Shelina started with CARE in 2014 and has an extensive background in program management for leading pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer and Novo Nordisk and most recently served as the technical writer for a local Tanzania NGO that was awarded two programs from USAID and CDC. Shelina has a Bachelors in Biology from Harvard and a Master’s in Business Management/ Public Health from Yale.

Paul Daniëls | Country Director | CARE Tanzania

Paul Daniels, a Dutch national, started his international career as a Junior Professional Officer with the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) in the Middle East and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Mexico.  He has a bachelor degree in Business Economics of the University of Brabant and a Master Degree in Development Economics of the University of Amsterdam. After his tenure with the UN he started working for international NGOs. He was a Coordinator for cross border Rural Development Programming in Afghanistan with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), being based in Peshawar. He also served as a Deputy Director for IRC in the same location. Subsequently he became IRC’s Country Director in Georgia and Vienna, Austria. The Vienna program was a resettlement program for Bosnian and Iranian refugees to the US. Following his tenure with IRC he joined UMNCOR as a Country Director in Armenia, where he was instrumental in setting up a local micro-finance organization, AREGAK, with a portfolio of 6 million dollars.  From UMCOR he went to work for Mercy Corps in Lebanon and then joined CARE as Program Director for Somalia, being based in Nairobi, Kenya. During this assignment he was forced to close all CARE’s operations in South/Central Somalia because of threats by the Al-Shebab movement. After three years he was appointed to Program Director in Sudan just before the separation of North and South Sudan. Since July 2012 he is the Country Director of CARE in Tanzania. His two adult children are or have been working as officers for international NGOs in the Republic of Georgia and Libya.  While in Kenya his family adopted a 2-year old who is now attending school in Dar es Salaam. During his tenure with CARE in Tanzania he worked with his team on a new strategy for the Tanzania office, WEZESHA, which is based on the CPR recommendations, in line with the CI strategy and focuses on women empowerment and climate change adaptation.