A team of Gender at Work facilitators and knowledge management associates is supporting the ‘Education Unions Take Action to End School Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV) program in collaboration with UN Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI) and Education International (EI). SRGBV is present in all education systems around the world and takes many different forms, from bullying and perpetuating gender stereotypes that marginalize girls to corporal punishment, sexual harassment of learners and teachers to sexual assault. EI, which represents 350 million teachers worldwide, adopted a resolution mandating their membership to combat SRGBV in 2015. In 2016 and 2017, G@W facilitated Gender Action Learning (GAL) processes with seven unions in five Eastern and Southern African countries, representing over one million teachers at all levels of the education system. Change experiments included raising awareness among union members, revising gender policies to include SRGBV, tackling corporal punishment in schools, empowering learners to speak out and building new collaborations between unions and other stakeholders. In 2018-19, the program will build on this experience to work with two unions in West Africa and share learning more broadly within the global education labour movement. The four-year program is funded by Global Affairs Canada, EI and the participating unions’ own resources.
