If you are a donor, please consider ways to structure your projects to test some of the hypotheses. The discussion was about gender and humanitarian aid, and was founded on a study recently completed by Julie Mertus and Judy Benjamin that analyzes recent experiences of humanitarian groups to recognize the gender dimension and identify catalysts for change and points of resistance. Leadership is critical and change depends on personalities. Size of the organization is a factor large organizations have a harder time changing. Decentralization can impede the implementation of new policies promulgated from headquarters.
Organizations needs for donors to encourage improvements on attention to gender.
The Forum is also to assess the state of the art in order to help define future actions for integrating gender into the practice of community conservation. The Forum has two phases. These meetings are to bring together best practices and lessons learned on community conservation with a gender perspective. Phase I consisted of a literature review and a preliminary assessment of women's cross-border trade activities in West Africa. Morris and Saul traveled to major markets or border areas of Mali, Senegal, Benin and Ghana and in corresponding border areas of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Cote D'Ivoire for five weeks.