OUR Practices
Until recently, much of the content of grassroots women’s work and knowledge has been held either in the heads of grassroots women themselves, their partners or in places so dispersed, others couldn’t get to it.

The sheer absence of content has contributed to an absence of awareness of grassroots women’s perspectives and, therefore, gender distortions in policy setting.

Surfacing the Knowledge
To address the problem, Huairou helped launch a search-and-publish mission for grassroots women’s practices. With the support of UNDP/MDGD, a team of Huairou members, UN planners, researchers, and media people devised a formal method for capturing grassroots women’s community development experience.

To name the project, they added the pronoun OUR to Best Practices, thus designating grassroots ownership of the knowledge products.

In 2000, the team submitted 42 Our Best Practices – from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America -- to the UN-HABITAT Best Practices and Local Leadership (BPLL) program cycle and Dubai Award.

Changing the Paradigm
Meanwhile, Huairou representatives influenced the policy-orientation and gender sensitivity of the UN- program.

• Orientation to the Best Practices program now includes a briefing on gender awareness and emphasis on grassroots women’s contribution to development.
• The reporting format was adapted to include a separate category on gender and new lead questions on gender roles and responsibilities.
• Those who pre-submitted applications for feedback, began to be advised of the desirability of including gender sensitive data and information.
• Gender awareness and gender sensitivity, while not being used as an eliminating factor for qualifying a submission as a good or bad practice, is now to be officially considered in qualifying submissions, shortlisting and making final awards.

Next Steps
Huairou continues to work with Best Practices and Local Leadership. To participate, contact:

Huairou representative to the BPLL
Monika Jaeckel: minenl@xs4all.nl
Website: www.mine.cc

Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme
Nicolas You: bestpractices@unhabitat.org