موسسين شبكه زنان افغان(FNAW)

FNAW Programs for Afghan Women

PROGRAM: Communications Package Assistance Program for Afghan Women's Organizations: Now Accepting New Applications for 2008

The Funders’ Network for Afghan Women is pleased to announce that it is now welcoming new applications for Spring 2008 for its in-kind technical assistance program, the Communications Package Assistance Program for Afghan Women’s Organizations. This program, is free to selected candidates, and matches Afghan women’s organization with a volunteer communications professional who assists them with one or all of the following, according to the organization’s needs:

To be eligible, organizations must be:

Applications will be accepted until July 1st, 2008. To apply, organizations should submit a 2-3 page proposal which includes:

Contact information (email, tel, headquarters address)

Organization’s mission or mandate

A sample of recent activities

An overview of current communications efforts and activities

Explanation of why the communications assistance is needed

List of specific communications needs requested

Organizations Supported through the Program in 2007:

Afghan Organization Communications Professional

Afghan Women’s Resource Centre

Alexandra Narvey

Women’s and Men’s Development Organizations

Olivier Jarvis Lavoie

Health and Development Center for Afghan Women

Azadeh Yaraghi

Women and Children’s Legal Research Foundation

Seraidi Chesney
ECW Rachel MacKnight
Women’s Health and Development Organization Sera Onishi

We are continuously seeking volunteer communications professionals from anywhere in the world to work with other approved applicants who have not yet been matched with communications volunteers.

Click here for more info.

PROGRAM: The Mapping Gender in Afghanistan Database

Mapping Gender in Afghanistan:

A Database Project to Improve Donor and Civil Society Coordination

in Supporting Afghan Women and Girls

Throughout the spring and summer of 2008, the Funders Network for Afghan Women (FNAW) will be collecting data for a new initiative, the Mapping Gender in Afghanistan Database. FNAW is a coalition of dedicated foundations and granting organizations, as well as advocates, policy-makers and other agencies supporting programming benefitting women and girls in Afghanistan. To learn more, you may also visit us online at www.funders-afghan-women.org.

The Mapping Gender in Afghanistan project aims to create a database of all projects and programs in Afghanistan concerned with gender and/or improving the status of women. Our objective is to assist donors and implementing organizations in Afghanistan and elsewhere to coordinate, reduce duplication and overlap, and to build on previous work, experience and lessons learned from “doing gender” in Afghanistan. We aim to give donors the opportunity to identify potential partners with expertise and experience in a particular sector, to see where similar projects have been conducted in the past, and to network with donors or partners engaged in common work, among other benefits. The database will be accessible to any Afghanistan-based national organization, to member funders of FNAW, and to any organization that contributed data on their own projects and programs to the database.

To this end, we are conducting a review of any similar initiatives you may have been a part of, and initiating a partnership between our organizations by asking you to fill out our questionnaire designed to collect data on all gender and women-focused projects and programs in Afghanistan, so that it can be made available in a searchable database on FNAW’s website. We ask for a brief project or program description of any support or work you have carried out in Afghanistan related to gender or women since 2002, the outcome or anticipated outcome, donor(s), implementing partner(s), location of operation (province), targeted beneficiaries, term of project, and contact information for those responsible. Please contact us at your earliest convenience to request the brief questionnaire that will allow you participate in this project and to access the database, and use it in your own planning, partnering, networking and research.

We deeply appreciate your time and help in this project, and are excited about this opportunity to strengthen the effective collaboration between all organizations providing vital support for gender and women’s development in Afghanistan. We look forward to being able to make the database available to you and your colleagues, and to others, in the hopes that knowing what has been done in the past will allow us to build for what can be done in the future.

TO REQUEST A QUESTIONNAIRE, PLEASE CONTACT:

Anjuli Sherin, Mapping Gender Programming Project Intern

Tel: +1-415 401 8313 E-Mail: gitanjuli@hotmail.com

PROGRAM: Meeting the Information Needs of Donors and Afghan Civil Society

The enormously popular FNAW Listserv: join hundreds of subscribers who value this service by joining FNAW today.

PROGRAM: Annual Sector Priority

Each year, FNAW members identify a particular sector neglected by mainstream funders. This year, the theme of “women in public space” was chosen, encompassing women’s participation and leadership in culture, the arts, sport, recreation and literature. The theme was kicked off with a panel event in New York in March 2008 which featured four Afghan-American women speakers, each addressing different aspects of the theme. Afghanistan’s heritage restoration organization, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, was invited to present at the March event and at a FNAW meeting. A Kabul-based women and arts organization, the Centre for Contemporary Afghan Art, was invited to be the April Member of the Month and was profiled on our homepage and on the listserv.

Coming soon: A website page dedicated to the theme of “women in public space”, including women’s participation and leadership in culture, the arts, sport, recreation and literature, featuring a wealth of resources, links and highlighting organizations and donors working in this sector in Afghanistan.