Stepping It Up by Grace M.

Grace Mullin 
Muhanga District, Southern Region

The GAD Rwanda Committee officially formed in 2009. Over the next few years, the committee went through ups and downs with work flow. There were many great initiatives put forth, including starting the GLOW Camp (Girls Leading Our a World) and then eventually BE Camp (Boys Excelling). Various other projects were started, some country-wide (Like the Healthy Living Workshop), some at individual sites (Such as Women's Day Celebrations). Since 2009 many Peace Corps Volunteers have participated in gender work, both the numerous GAD Committee Members, as well as the Peace Corps Community, country-wide.

Over the last six months however, the GAD Committee has really stepped up their game. This has happened in part because of the help and work of our wonderful GAD Staff Liaison, Nicole, and in part because of new committee members with fresh eyes, fresh goals, and a whole lot of drive, motivation and dedication! GAD has begun to work on a lot of new initiatives to really bring GAD related issues, ideas and projects to the Peace Corps Rwanda Community. I am so proud of the group I work with and all of the time they have given in the last few months to improve the work we do. I wanted to take a moment to highlight these things for everyone to see, as well as to express my eternal gratitude!

• GAD Manual: after realizing that many other GAD Peace Corps Programs had specific GAD Manuals for volunteers in their country to utilize as a resource for understanding gender issues, strengths and challenges, members of our GAD Committee formed a standing committee to create one for Rwanda. Four months and 123 pages later, I am very pleased to report that Peace Corps Rwanda now has a GAD Manual for volunteers, that is in the final approval process and should be available in the next month. It goes through everything from the breakdown of the gender statistics in Rwanda (based off of data from various Reports and Policies, especially those from the Government of Rwanda), an understanding of gender needs in both the Health and Education Sectors (the two Peace Corps Sectors here in Rwanda), cross-sector GAD information, an overview of projects that have been done both in Rwanda and other countries that volunteers can use to generate ideas, information on other NGOs in Rwanda that do gender work, and various gender issues volunteers may face in country, especially regarding the cultural differences between America and Rwanda. We are very excited about this Manual, and are confident it will help all of our volunteers to be better aware of gender needs in their communities and ways to attend to those on various levels!
• Social Media and Publications: we have also increased our work to share what we are doing with the larger community. This includes blog writing by all members on a more consistent time table, a Facebook GAD Rwanda page (as supposed to just a group), quarterly GAD Updates (for Volunteers), and a revamp/relaunch of our GLOW Magazine (coming out in the next week).
• A restructuring of GAD positions, including a GAD Chair, a more defined role of the GAD Secretary, a NGO Liaison, a specific M&E Point Person (Monitoring and Evaluation), and a defined role of standing committees for various projects.
• Work to increase our GAD-related M&E so we have a better grasp on all of the ways in which we are contributing to gender development here in Rwanda.
• A more defined Mission Statement, as well as more defined Objectives for both our GLOW and BE Camps/Clubs.
• Updating a very archaic and somewhat unhelpful Gender and Development Section of our Peace Corps Rwanda Resource Drive, giving volunteers more access to gender-related publications, Government of Rwanda gender-related documents, policies and statistics, camp documents, club ideas, and other helpful resources.
• More ideas generated on helping volunteers to recognize gender-related International Days, including International Women's Day (March 8), International Day of the Girl Child (October 11), International Men's Day (November 19), and 16 Days of Activism (November 25-December 10).
• Discussions on other projects we can bring into the communities, most notably Gender Walks and a new "Let Girls Work" Campaign (a spin off of the new Peace Corps Worldwide "Let Girls Learn" Campaign, which will be based off of the concepts of Take Your Daughter To Work Day)... More information on these projects to come soon!!

As you can (hopefully) see... We have been very busy!! So THANK YOU to all of the Committee Members and our Staff Liaison for ALL of the hard work you are doing. It certainly has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated, and will hopefully be now be noticed by a much larger community (you, our wonderful readers and supporters)!

Until next time, Happy GADing :)