Huairou Commission Our Best Practices Task Force
OUR BEST PRACTICES: WOMEN, HOMES and COMMUNITY CAMPAIGN
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Introduction
Best Practices as a Strategy
Target Audiences
Principles
Criteria
How to get involved in the Our Best Practices Initiative
Timetable
Our Best Practices Submission Format
Huairou Commission
Dubai International Award for Best Practices
Best Practices Database

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Introduction
The HUAIROU COMMISSION ON WOMEN AND HABITAT is a network of international grassroots women’s and partner organisations committed to :

• highlighting women’s concerns and contributions in the development of sustainable communities,
• strengthening the capacity building and empowerment of women in human settlements and in local governance,
• facilitating the networking of grassroots women’s groups,
• building principled partnerships between grassroot women’s groups and strategical partners in the different sectors of society: media, local and national governments, intergovernmental bodies, donor agencies, the private sector, academia, NGOs,
• creating an umbrella for local grassroot groups to access global structures,
• ensuring that the Habitat Agenda is implemented with women in central decision-making roles and with sufficient resources to function effectively,
• playing an advisory role to international and UN agencies, government and intergovernmental bodies.

The Huairou Commission Our Best Practices Task Force was created in partnership with UNDP/MDGD in order to highlight projects that convey the issues grassroots women world-wide are facing as well as the problem solving strategies and successes they have come up with and to make them easily accessible. The aim of the task force is to identify, document and disseminate grassroots women’s innovations and learnings and to enrich the methodology and processes around best practices in a community based and gender sensitive way.
We understand Our Best Practices as practices where grassroot women are taking leadership roles in the development of communities, and where the everyday life experiences of grass-root women are considered as expertise and entered as such into local governance and the designing of sustainable settlements.

We understand Our Best Practices as identifying ideas, concepts, processes and strategies, that are the seeds of change, that redefine and redistribute the use of resources and transform the status quo.

We understand Our Best Practices as a celebration of the keys to success, the innovations and the ingeniousness of development strategies that women practice in their day to day lives and as a process that allows them to own the ideas they have developed as well as the tools by which they are disseminated.

We understand Our Best Practices as a way to overcome the gap between government commitments and implementation, as a strategy for mainstreaming community priorities and people-based knowledge into policy making and as a way to keep the focus on what governments are doing to meet grassroot women’s concerns as well as to maintain international attention on grassroot needs and capabilities and public interest in the local efforts of grassroot women.

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Best Practices as a Strategy
Women are at the core of communities. There is immense wisdom and know-how to be found in the daily survival strategies of neighborhood women and grassroot women’s groups. Best Practices are a way to center stage this well of expertise, to spread and legitimize women’s knowledge, to showcase solutions that work on the ground, to highlight examples of ethical and sustainable partnerships, and to uncover the hidden strengths and unclaimed powers of grassroot women. The exchange of good practices has tremendous potential for empowering communities and reshaping interventions in habitat, the world over.

Grassroot women’s groups often have concrete answers and sustainable practices to questions being raised. They very often already are practising on the ground where others are developing theories. Vibrant action by poor communities in addressing basic needs are keeping our cities alive.

These initiatives are often not visible to institutional actors, they are taken for granted, not acknowledged and not considered, when resources are being distributed. Their successes are acquired and implemented without giving the grassroot initiators credit and authorship.

Creating the process of Our Best Practices is a strategy for grassroot women’s groups to realise and articulate the abundance and sophistication of their practices, to claim ownership and produce a basis for dialogue with partners, to create peer learning and networking structures, to join forces and harvest their lessons learned, to leverage political power, and to monitor and control the implementation and mainstreaming of their knowledge and successes.

Identifying and documenting grassroot women’s best practices therefore is a strategy to strengthen the empowerment of grassroot women, enhance their political clout and negotiating power, increase their visibility, influence and recognition, and broaden the base of support for their issues.

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Target Audiences
With the UNDP/MDGD supported Database of Our Best Practices: Women, Homes, and Community the Huairou Commission aims at reaching a wide spectrum of audiences. The Database will be of particular interest to all organisations and individuals working in the field of habitat and with communities, that is to local governments, national government agencies, intergovernmental institutions, NGOs, CBOs and grassroot women’s groups, who can use it as a source of information and action. Social research institutes and programs specialising in policy evaluation and policy development as well as policy makers and actors in civil society are important target audiences.

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Principles
Following are a number of principles that guide the work of the Huairou Commission in identifying, documenting and disseminating Our Best Practices: Women, Homes and Community:

1. Diversity

The Huairou Commission recognises and respects diversity among women, which is seen as a source of richness and resources. For this reason, the effort of gathering women´s practices is happening throughout the globe. In each region the members of the Huairou Commission are trying to reach diverse women, approaches and answers to our everyday problems and challenges.

2. Building Knowledge

Documentation of Our Best Practices is meant to be in itself a process of empowerment for those women who are developing the experience. Women interested in sharing their experience should learn from the process of documenting it. The documentation of the experience (with or without external support) is an opportunity to reflect about how we are doing things, what our visions are and what empowers us, what things are working for women and which are not, what are ways women learn, what sustains women’s networks, who are our partners and in what circumstances.

3. Participation

One of the important things that make Our Best Practices different is participation. Participation is a value that needs to be enhanced and promoted in all our efforts. Gathering information in an inclusive and participatory manner, looking at our experiences from the point of view of all the people involved, deciding together how to present the experience is important.

4. Sharing

The idea of documenting Our Best Practices is meant to enhance sharing among women, to foster mutual capacity building in face to face exchanges, and peer learning and transfer systems. It is important that grassroot women be initiators of their own information sharing and horizontal and vertical transfers rather than receivers and beneficiaries of trainings, programs and capacity buildings of the „development industry“.

5. Ownership

The experiences documented are the practices of those who carry them out. The inclusion of these experiences in publications, data bases, conferences and other channels of communication and transfer will respect this ownership and create favorable conditions for grassroot participation and ownership in dissemination and implementation processes.

6. Empowerment and Global Learning

The Huairou Commission looks at the process of documenting Our Best Practices as a means for providing CBOs with tools for their empowerment and as part of a process of global learning. Women are acting locally, but we are also building strong connections and networks at a global level to put value on indigenous expertise, to validate and legitimize women’s ways of knowing and doing, to monitor the framing and interpretation of women’s experiences and initiatives and to ensure that the benefits come back to the groups that helped in the process of identifying, gathering and making known what women are doing.

7. Respectful Partnerships

Respectful relationships and partnerships for the documentation and dissemination of Our Best Practices is a way of bringing together our strength and that of our alliances.
This includes careful consideration of the conditions and principles needed for sustainable partnerships.

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Criteria
We see the following criteria as distinguishing Our Best Practices:

Center staging grassroots women
Advancing women’s leadership and empowerment
Principled, equal, and fair partnerships
Solutions strengthening the whole community
Validating female culture, female bonding and support systems
Validating local heritage and everyday life experience
Sustainable transformation
Identifying and sharing success strategies (exchange, transfer, networking, upscaling)
Claiming space and resources for women
Creating and owning learning systems
Participatory methods, transparency and inclusiveness
Building a supportive, happy, trusting environment
Reeducating mainstream, expanding decision making and social inclusion
Recognising, validating and owning best practice

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How to get involved in the Our Best Practices Initiative
The Huairou Commission will collaborate with grassroot groups and networks and their partners to identify, collect, analyse and compile Our Best Practices. These organisations and partners are invited and encouraged to contribute their knowledge and experience to the development of the Our Best Practices Database.
Contributors are asked to provide detailed information on their work with women and communities following the format outlined below.

A selection committee composed of regionally diverse members of the Huairou Commission member organisations will review the eligibility of the submissions for the Our Best Practices Database.

The Huairou Commission can offer a documentation support of $ 300 per accepted submission.

Submissions qualifying for the Our Best Practice Database are eligible to be forwarded to the Best Practices and Local Leadership Program of UNCHS for consideration for the Dubai International Awards for Best Practices in Improving the Living Environment as well as to other best practice programs and electronic databases.

Practices selected for the Our Best Practice Database are also eligible to be invited to present at the Grassroot Women’s International Academy at the Expo 2000 (GWIA), conducted by the SOS Mother Center 2000, the National Association of Mother Centers Germany and the Huairou Commission Women, Homes and Community Regional Center Europe in partnership with GROOTS (Grassroot Organisations Operating Together in Sisterhood).

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Timetable
The dead line for submissions to the Our Best Practices Database 2000 is Sept. 31st 1999.

Please send the submissions on line to:

bestpracticeshc@dji.de
or mail them on diskette to the Huairou Commission Our Best Practices Task Force
Monika Jaeckel, DJI, Nockherstr. 2, 81541 Munich, Germany

From October till December 1999 the Huairou Commission Our Best Practices selection committee will engage in a back and forth communication process with submitters to refine submissions for qualification in the Our Best Practices Database.

From January till March submissions qualifying for Our Best Practices Database and so wishing will be forwarded to other best practices programs and to the Expo 2000 Grassroot Women’s International Academy (GWIA) Planning Committee. GWIA will take place in the summer of 2000 (time frame: June - October).

We see the development of Our Best Practices as an on-going process. Criteria, format, guidelines, principles, networking and selection process will be subject to review at the next meeting of the Huairou Commission Our Best Practice Task Force, which will be scheduled for Jan/Feb 2000 in Prague, Czech Republic.

Please address information requests about the Huairou Commission and how to get involved in other projects (i.e. the creation of a Women’s Award, a network of grassroot learning and transfer systems, exchange programs, grassroot input at global events, the creation of guidelines for action research) to the

Huairou Commission Secretariat, Jan Peterson
2 United Nations Plaza,
DC2-0943, New York, New York 10017 USA,
Tel: 1-212-832-6446
Fax: 1-212-832-9059
Email: petersonrj@aol.com
Web: http://www.sustainabledevelopment.org/blp/partners/huairou.html

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Our Best Practices Submission Format
Please provide the following information when submitting your Best Practice:

Name of the Best Practice

Address (including street, town, postal code, country, telephone, fax and e mail)

Contact Person

Type of Organisation (NGO, CBO, local/national government, private sector, donor)

Partners (provide name, address, contact person, organisation type for each partner)

Partner Support (financial, technical, political, administrative, specify for each partner)

Financial Profile of Best Practice ( indicate total budget in US$ and percentage of contribution from each partner)

Category (Please select up to three):
Shelter and urban infrastructure, sustainable human settlement development, mainstreaming gender and combating social exclusion, experimental and innovative practices, improved consumption /production cycles, eradication of poverty and job creation, safe water supply and sanitation, improved environment and health, natural and human-made disasters, responsiveness to the ideas and needs of youth, waste collection, recycling and reuse, accessible public transport and communication, crime prevention and social justice, efficient, accountable and transparent governance, use of information in decision-making, architecture and urban design, addressing the needs of older persons.

Level of Activity (International, National, State/Region, Town, Neighborhood, Village)

Eco-System (Arid, Coastal, Continental, High Plateau, Island, Mountain, River, Tropical)

Summary:
In no more than 250 words, summarize in narrative why you consider your initiative a Best Practice, the purpose and the achievements.

Key Dates (no more than five dates, describing their significance in 5-6 words)

Narrative: Describe your work in 2000 words or less in regard to the following:
(as is most relevant to your practice)

Values, Principles and Priorities:
Defining what matters. What are the values guiding the initiative.
Publically validating women and grassroot culture. Holistic and inclusive. Promoting
dignity, local heritage, diversity and sisterhood. The culture of nurturing and care.

Female Leadership:
Taking leadership roles to inspire innovative action, foster change, promote transparent, accountable, inclusive decision making and efficient and sustainable use of resources. Redistributing development roles to women and to grassroots.

Objectives and Strategies:
Addressing practical needs of grassroot women and communities. Mobilisation of financial, technical and human resources, identifying and counteracting negative effects of structural adjustment.

Process:
Encouraging participation. How are people, organisations, institutions and partners involved in the initiative. Who initiated the practice (informal, formal, reactive, proactive). Who defines policies and initiates activities. Who manages funds, resources and information. How are agendas set, meetings run decisions taken and communicated.

Empowerment:
Enhancing sense of capabilities, self worth and self confidence. How are grassroot women’s skills, networks and resources drawn on, leveraged and enhanced.
Building capacities to reflect and take action to:
improve living conditions, access resources and support systems, participate in partnerships and decision making, hold organisations and leaders to account, enhance self reliance.

Social Inclusion:
Respecting and responding to social and cultural diversity, promoting social equality and equity, recognising and valuing different abilities, expressing local expertise and culture. Facilitating convergence, involving all stake-holders.

Impact:
Making a difference. What are the outcomes for grassroots women? Anticipated and unanticipated outcomes and consequences. Objectives realised, results achieved. Evidence of tangible improvements. Not so visible and visible. Qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure impact and who is using them. Redefinition and redistribution of resources. Changes in attitudes and behavior. Changes in the use of language. Expansion of skills, roles, leadership and choices. Strengthening of relationships, expansion of networks and alliances. Reframing of local governance. Reducing the distances between governments and grassroots.
Short-Term, Mid-Term, Longer.

Partnerships:
Building principled and sustainable partnerships. What works in partnerships, what doesn’t. What are the gaines to each partner and how are they made explicit. How are partner dialogues conducted and structured. In what ways are partners (re)trained to support the grass-roots voice and gender-oriented practices.
What are the roles of intermediaries (planners, organisers, facilitators, academics).
Bridging the gap between local and public cultures.

Sustainability:
Lasting changes (at levels within and beyond the grassroots, e.g. village/neighborhood, city-wide, regionally, nationally, globally) regarding:
legislative frameworks, standards, institutional structures, decision-making processes, policies, efficiency, transparency and accountability, use of resources, economic development, behaviour patterns, public culture, respect for local heritage, environmental practices.

Lessons Learned
Learning from experience, recognising strengths, identifying and overcoming problems, group analysis and up-dating of strategies. Creating room for reflection, development of learning systems.

Replicability and Transfers
Expanding, upscaling and replicating the initiative. Sharing and disseminating knowledge, know-how and keys to success. Designing and evolving tools for transfer. What exchanges occur(ed) internally and externally among Grassroot Women, and with their Partners (Academics, Donors, Church Women, Media, Local Government etc). What practices were adapted and implemented elsewhere.

References: Please list and if possible submit copies of up to 10 most recent articles or publications, videos (up to 5 minutes), audia tapes, photographs, posters, postcards and other scanned graphic material.

Wish to be forwarded to the Dubai International Award for Best Practices and other Best Practice Databases yes ( ) , no ( ).