Women, Agriculture and Resource Management (WARM)

April 14, 2008
IFPRI Meeting Room
2033 K Street NW, Washington DC 20016.

Meeting Agenda:

WARM Welcome 5:00 - 5:30
Visit over wine and cheese as we gather
Meeting 5:30 - 7:00

1. Introductions and Updates of Participants

2. Briefing members on WFD-Alliance Summit meeting on April 13 by Martha Hirpa, Heifer International

3. Update on discussions of WARM Draft Mission Statement (The new one developed during the WFD-Summit)

4. Discussion and choice of activities for next meeting

Meeting Minutes:

1. Discussion about WFD

2. How WARM is and can be involved in the future.

3. The WFD meeting was attended by 150 NGOs. The leaders of these NGOs attended, hence they have the power to make decisions. After discussions and commitments at the WFD, they would go back to their own frameworks and start implementing the ideas.

4. One important step was a message from the president of Liberia, where she proposed that the 7 women ambassadors who currently represent 7 countries to USA would champion African women's causes.

5. The WFD would have 3 full-time staff to monitor the commitments and for the three sectors: women, faith and development.

6. The WFD meeting was a good meeting point of both the faith community and the development community

7. Till now the faith community was concerned with gender more as an extension of development - Julia

8. Martha felt that the three sectors are still independent, but in areas where there is a common goal, they will work together. The commitment made at the WFD, in spirit is more to their organizational and not to WFD. The WFD will help monitor these commitments.

9. If all these communities are interested in doing good for the poorest in the society, there is no way to get there without addressing agriculture and women - Dianne

10. The worst case scenario is that the WFD commitments would end up like the MDGs: Dianne

11. These merging borders is a great first step. It is a great leverage point for structural and political action. The important question is how to get from paper to leverage it to action : Sarah

12. Jeannette broached the topic about what would be the scope for WARM.

13. Advocacy is a good start. Even a space for sharing these ideas is good. It is important that the WFD is trying to reach out to faith based organizations without challenging them: Sarah

14. WARM as a network was discussed.

15. Debdatta gave an overview of the process through which WARM came up with a set of commitments to present to the WFD. However, these commitments can now form a pathway for the next steps for WARM.

16. Jeannette: that we meet in WARM as individuals is great and it is away from the constrains of our respective organizations. If there is a coming together of faith and development organizations, we should be open to it.

17. Rekha: WARM is rather similar to another organization called WEIGO. The only difference is that WARM is DC based. WEIGO was successful in bringing the informal economy in the agenda of development organizations and brining hard statistics to bear from the country level to the global level and getting development agencies to change their perspectives. Mobilizing action. WARM can draw lessons from WEIGO.
a. Scope: would be nice to have a bigger vision, to centralize action
b. If we can identify the synergies between WEIGO and WARM and present it to the donors, the idea would be appealing.
c. WEIGO was also built on relationships which then resulted in action
d. Have linkages between grassroots actions and the DC base

18. Sarah: On the same line, the book that Chemonics came out with called, Local Action, Global Change. It is an old book done in the 1980s. Chemonics redid and published it. However, it is very highly priced in Amazon. Sarah has some extra copies for those who want it. The book has excellent examples of mobilizing action for change.

19. It was decided that the next meeting will be held on Thursday May 8th at Chemonics.

20. The meeting was then adjourned.


List of Attendees:

1. Jeannette Gurung
2. Lauren Pandolphelli
3. Debdatta Sengupta
4. Sarah Tisch
5. Suman Gautam
6. Kathy Koon
7. Dianne Forte
8. Martha Hiper
9. Julia Clones
10. Rekha Mehra