July 15th, 2008

Dear dgMember,

Welcome to your newsletter from the Gender and Development dgCommunity of the Development Gateway!

In This Issue:

- NEW HIGHLIGHT: The story of Mali, Filipina migrant in Italy: How the members of her family reinvented their roles

- NEW LOOK! New Features!

- TWO NEW dgCOMMUNITIES Launched on Key Development Topics

- HIGHLIGHT RESOURCES

- NEW! DISCUSSION

- NEW! RESOURCE OF INTEREST

- MEMBER DIRECTORY: NEW! CREATE YOUR BUSINESS CARD

Mali migrated to Italy from the Philippines when she was 46 years old, three years after her husband had moved there for work as a domestic helper. Both of them now work in Italy and send money home to their sons, who are concluding their studies in the Philippines. Mali was born in 1958 in Pampanga, a poor province in the Central Luzon region. After leaving her country, she became the main provider for her household and a determined worker.

“When I was in Pampanga I used to own a goods store. I also had a grocery store; I was also a rice dealer and money lender. I was a busy business woman,” she recounted in an interview with UN-INSTRAW. However, the money Mali and her husband made working in the Philippines was not enough to ensure that her sons, aged 22 and 19, and her daughter, aged 18 could go to university. In fact, the family was not even able to cover their basic living expenses. In 2002, Mali’s husband left to find work in Italy in order to try and add to the family’s income. Three years later, Mali decided to join him. Upon arrival, Mali was welcomed by her husband and shortly afterwards, she started working as a live-in nanny for a family in Parioli, Rome...

The text and photograph for this article courtesy UN-INSTRAW, a partner and Cooperating Organization with dgCommunity Gender and Development.

Read the complete highlight

This bright new dgCommunities newsletter is part of a fresh updated look for dgCommunities as the Development Gateway rolls out a new open source content management system in May. New features will soon be available on almost all dgCommunities, including a star system for rating the usefulness of a resource; cloud tags to instantly identify most frequently accessed key words; and a member option to add your Business Card information located in 'Manage Your Account' under 'My Gateway'.

Your global dgCommunity team has been training to use the new system using online tools donated by The John C. Ford Program-Global Education Initiative. Thanks to all their hard work--and thanks to your patience as the new system comes online--dgCommunities will remain one of the world's premiere knowledge-sharing platforms for development information.

Two new dgCommunities on topics of vital importance for development go live in May. "Disaster Prevention & Response" contains resources related to emergency responses to environmental and medical catastrophes in developing countries. "Stabilization & Reconstruction" includes knowledge resources needed to stabilize and rebuild developing countries following environmental disasters or armed conflict.

Developed through a partnership with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), these new portals will provide a virtual space to enable participants to build capacity, strengthen working relationships, and improve development outcomes. Particular emphasis will be placed on bringing together government agencies and international and nongovernmental organizations in developed and developing countries to discuss common challenges.

- Feminized Migration Flows to Italy

- Inception and Evolution of Filipino Migration Flows to Italy

- Gender, remittances and Local Rural Development: The Case of Filipino Migration to Italy

- How migration improves the education of migrant’s children in Philippines

The Association of Women in Development ( AWID ) published, jointly, with Zed Books, "Building Feminist Movements and Organizations - Global Perspectives" in 2007. This groundbreaking collection of essays by activists from all over the world explores what it means to be an effective women's organization, and what it takes to build the kinds of movements we need to transform women's lives. Touching on everything from how to build successful participatory democratic processes and implement shared leadership models, to lessons on overcoming internal organizational divisions, the case studies in this collection focus not only on the "what" but also the "how" of movement building. Anyone involved in the complex, vexing question of how to effect sustainable change will find not only much food for thought, but also an abundance of creative ideas and innovative strategies - served up with a uniquely feminist twist. To order a copy of the book, email contact@awid.org.

But, perhaps you have more stories and views to share from your country on such feminist movements? The Development Gateway Foundation welcomes your contributions on this forum.

Thanks. Best wishes.

Photograph, Courtesy AWID website. AWID is a partner and Cooperating Organization with dgCommunity Gender and Development

Share your views with us!

- International Consultation of Women’s Organizations and Networks and Aid Effectiveness

From January 31 to February 1 of 2008, AWID, WIDE and UNIFEM co-organized the International Consultation of Women’s Organizations and Networks and Aid Effectiveness in Ottawa, Canada. The Consultation was co-sponsored by CCIC, Action Aid International, and IDA-Canada.The purpose of this meeting was to bring together more than 50 participants from different regions of the world, in order to exchange analyses and experiences about the implementation of the Paris Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness and its impacts on women’s rights and gender equality. The participants represented various different types CSOs from both the North and South. Some of the groups represented were; women’s regional networks, INGOs, international networks, gender advocates from donor agencies and the UN system, women’s rights organizations and CSOs which focus their work on gender equality.

With over 30,000 registered dgCommunities members, the Member Directory provides a one-stop shop for key contacts and collaboration worldwide. We invite you to take advantage of this unprecedented collaborative tool and add your profile today!

Our new Member Directory enables you to more easily contact fellow professionals in the international development community for expert advice, information, and collaboration. You will be able to find development practitioners from over 200 countries, with interests and expertise in dozens of areas, including your own! We invite you to update your member profile and create your Business Card to let your colleagues in development know more about your interests and expertise.

Quick Start - 4 Easy Tools:

- NEW! ESTABLISH YOUR BUSINESS CARD
Your business card helps others to get easily your contact data. Business Card is displayed only for dgCommunities members who are in in your colleagues network and only if you have chosen to open it for its members. In other cases your personal e-mail address will never be used. We provide an e-mail forwarding service.
Simply log in and go to My Gateway:
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/My-Gateway.45.0.html
On upper right under "Manage Your Account", scroll down to "Edit your Business Card", enter your information, then click "Update" at the bottom of the page.

-ESTABLISH or UPDATE YOUR PROFILE
Let your colleagues in development know more about your interests and expertise through your dgCommunities profile. Simply log in and go to My Gateway:
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/My-Gateway.45.0.html
On upper right under "Manage Your Account", scroll down to "Edit Member Profile", and click "Update".

-SEARCH FOR MEMBERS
Log in to the Development Gateway and go to "My Gateway"under "Member Service". Scroll down to "Manage Your Contacts" and click "Search directory to add new contacts". You can search by: name, country, interest, expertise, organization, organization type, or by keywords in member bios. Search Results will show you a list of members with a link to their profiles.
You can also reach the Member Directory on My Gateway on the left column under "Member Services" when you scroll down and click "Directory"
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/Directory.60.0.html

-COMMUNICATE WITH MEMBERS
When viewing a member's profile, click "Contact this user". This will open a message box in which you can type and send a message through our message forwarding system.

-CREATE OWN CONTACT LIST OF MEMBERS
You can build a list of key contacts and form your own network of members. Searching for members will produce a results list; you can then select members to be added to your "My Contacts" list by clicking on the plus sign under "Status" for each desired contact. Or, when viewing a particular member's profile, click "Add this member to My Contacts".
Your full contact list can be viewed when you log in, go to My Gateway, scroll down to "Manage Your Contacts" and click "View your dgCommunity contacts list".

Did you know that as a member of the Gender and Development dgCommunity you can share your knowledge resources (e.g., websites, papers, reports, presentations, images, news, events, etc) in just about any format including streaming audio and video.

Each resource will be described on a unique interactive page that will acknowledge you as the contributor and link to your profile. To view full text of knowledge resources, users will follow links to host websites, which will benefit from increased traffic from the Development Gateway community!

Simply click on the "Add content here" hyperlink in the middle of the page at: http://gender.developmentgateway.org/

Thank you!
Anuradha Bhattacharjee
Content Coordinator
dgGender & Development
Email: abhattacharjee@dgfoundation.org
http://gender.developmentgateway.org