Grassroots Women's Community Development - Huairou

The Huairou Commission is working to accomplish its goals through advocacy – local, national and international - as well as network building, capacity building, resource development, and empowerment strategies. A special focus is placed on coalition-building and networking across networks, and forging strategic partnerships for education, advocacy, policy dialogue, and programme alliances. The Huairou Commission's approach to development work is based on a paradigm of collective action that is community-based and led by women. What has emerged is a platform for grassroots women to build their capacity to act locally and to directly represent their priorities in key local, community, and global arenas. Huairou gives visibility to grassroots women's solutions by placing them at the centre of strategic policy dialogues and action planning.

Specifically, the Huairou Commission and its Member Networks have developed several methodologies to enable grassroots women to collectively articulate and analyse their successful on-the-ground work in such a way that they can convey their priorities in decision-making forums:

• Grassroots Women's International Academies - intensive teaching/learning workshops where grassroots women gather to exchange successful strategies, discuss barriers, and make policy recommendations with each other and with the support of observing partners. Grassroots women are the primary teachers and learners and professionals are invited to join the educational forums only when their participation will benefit the women. Each Academy is organised around a theme. Groups are selected from around the world for their interest or expertise in the subject. They present practices from their home communities in formal and informal settings. They draw out common threads, identify common challenges, and craft policy recommendations. Ultimately, the Academy invites policymakers to join them in discussing how to bring the best of the harvested knowledge to bear on development problems.
• Peer Exchanges where grassroots groups visit one another to exchange successful practices and transfer these practices.
• Local to Local Dialogues where grassroots women convene dialogues with local authorities in order to discuss their development needs and form ongoing partnerships for collaboration.
• Internet forums providing a democratic space for grassroots women to share and debate given themes. 
• Participatory mapping and documentation projects that lead to advocacy and action planning.

To elaborate on the latter, the network focuses its joint efforts on 5 campaigns, as of this writing (visit the Huairou website for further details): Governance, AIDS, Disaster, Land and Housing, and Peace Building. The campaigns use the empowerment and capacity-building methods developed by Huairou member groups over two decades. Among other methods, they include peer-learning exchanges, leadership support, grassroots women's international academies on different themes, documentation of grassroots practices, and local-to-local governance dialogues.

For example, as part of its Governance project, the Huairou Commission, has supported its members' participation in governance by:

• Providing opportunities for women's groups to collaborate with state and other institutional actors
• Building capacities of men and women in elected office to be more responsive to women and the needs of their communities
• Building women's capacities to articulate their priorities and demonstrate their capacities to control and manage resources and services
• Promoting alliances between grassroots women and individuals in positions of power
• Enabling women to influence the delivery of resources and services such as education, water supply, sanitation, healthcare, and credit
• Educating institutions to encourage women's contributions by providing space for them to meet, childcare during meetings, and safe transportation to and from public events
• Building strong alliances between grassroots women's groups, private sector, and state actors. This includes encouraging and strengthening women's participation in multi-stakeholder negotiations.

One theme that shapes several Huairou strategies and activities is that of claiming space. Based on the belief that "[a]ccess and control over public space reflects the accomplishments of grassroots women's groups and provides a base for their community building activities", the Commission developed an exhibit called "Our Practices - Space" for display at the World Urban Forum III. The Space exhibit was made up of 38 2x2 panels reflecting the accomplishments of 17 grassroots women's groups and highlighting the claiming of space as a critical organising strategy among grassroots women's groups throughout the world. As a follow-up, the Commission is developing a handbook that will feature the 17 groups included in the exhibit as well as 5 to 10 additional groups. Women and Space: Stories of Grassroots Women's Community Centers from Around the World will argue that grassroots women's groups need their own independent community spaces and will demonstrate practical examples of implementation and strategies used by grassroots women.

Women, Rights.

The non-governmental forum held in Huairou, China, during the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 drew 35,000 representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - the "vast majority of them women....For grassroots women the event was a watershed. For the first time in a major modern international meeting, they spoke for themselves. In the Grassroots Tent, sponsored by a coalition of organizations from around the world, groups of women sat center front and described their local organizations, problems, solutions, campaigns, and demands to their peers and visiting professionals. Implicit in all their comments was an intent to have a say in governing their local, regional and international communities. The Huairou Commission [was] established at the end of ten days of testimony and strategizing in the tent..."

In the words of organisers, the Commission "represents a major milestone for grassroots women in building a global movement of self-representation. The self-representation contrasts strongly with the former practice of being represented by intermediary organizations, a number of whom were largely based in the professions and not singularly grounded in the reality of rural and urban poor communities, where the majority of Huairou members live and draw their livelihoods."