On the 22nd and 23rd of March, Promundo tested the Toolbox of the project “Involving Men and Women in the Promotion of Gender Equality in Conditional Income Transfer Programs”, together with a team of 30 professionals from the Secretariat of Social Assistance from the Municipality of Itataré, São Paulo. The toolkit is a material that will be made available to professionals who work with beneficiaries of income transfer programs, such as Bolsa Família, in order to involve them, women and their partners, in questioning gender norms and economic empowerment feminine.
The workshop aimed to train the social assistance team in the use of gender transformative methodologies, especially professionals engaged in conditional income transfer programs, in addition to experimenting with the application of group exercises present in the toolkit.
Before participating in this testing, professionals from the Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS) in the municipality of Itararé carried out, with the technical support of Promundo, educational activities present in Manual M with 236 men and women beneficiaries of Bolsa Família and Renda Cidadã, income transfer program of the State of São Paulo.
The evaluation of the tool book was carried out through the application of the book's own exercises with a group of professionals from the Itararé Social Assistance Secretariat. “Through research-intervention work, the group experienced the activities and, at the end, debated possible uses, challenges and possibilities of applying these activities with the beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program”, informed Vanessa Fonseca, program coordinator at Promundo . The last moment of the workshop was dedicated to reflections on the format and uses of the tool notebook.
The project
The project “Involving Men and Women in the Promotion of Gender Equality in Conditional Cash Transfer Programs” is funded by UN Women and has been developed by Promundo since 2013. It aims to contribute to strengthening the autonomy and economic empowerment of women beneficiaries of income transfer programs, through the discussion of topics such as violence prevention, autonomy in decision-making by women within and outside the family sphere, motherhood, fatherhood, division of domestic tasks, labor rights for women and other issues of gender related to the Bolsa Família Program.
The first two years of the project were dedicated to interventions and research with beneficiaries from urban and rural areas of Rio de Janeiro and Recife. The years 2015 and 2016 were dedicated to writing and testing gender transformative methodologies, such as the toolkit and a booklet, which will support the work of professionals who work with beneficiaries of income transfer programs.
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