Gender mainstreaming

In all the projects and programs CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) finances, we work on gender "mainstreaming". That means that we always try to promote and when possible create equal opportunities and access for women (of all ages) for economic development. In our project between ACCC (Association of Canadian Community Colleges) and SENA (Colombian National Training Agency) this means that we try to stimulate access to training and professional training for both women and men. We "mainstream" it in all our activities.

Today I attended a session for industry representatives at the SENA Training Center for programs for the petro-chemical industry in Cartagena, in the north of Colombia (Cartagena is the capital city of the province of Bolivar, where we concentrate our ACCC-SENA program).

The session was to explain the options the new "applied research" laboratory of this SENA campus offers for their industry partners. The Manager of this laboratory is an expert in chemistry and a female professional (she is the one presenting in the photo above). Her Manager is also a chemical engineer and among the students starting to do applied research in this laboratory the balance is almost a perfect 50-50 %. SENA is already leading the way in gender mainstreaming in this field and maybe some of our Canadian colleges can learn some lessons here... :-)

I took these photos at the beginning of the session and afterwards some more industry representatives arrived. I counted at a later moment 9 visitors of whom 6 were female and 3 were male professionals. A few of them were HR Managers of local companies and others were Managers of Quality Control departments. They were all very enthusiastic about this new applied research facility, because so far they were sending some of their staff to the US and Europe for training on the displayed equipment.

The state-of-the-art testing equipment will be very beneficial to control the quality and safety processes of the local petro-chemical industry in Cartagena and Barranquilla. SENA Bolivar has also already signed a partnership agreement with one of the local Universities to have their students and staff use the laboratory for some more advanced primary research projects.

The balance of female and male professionals in this field and sector can only result in a safer and hopefully cleaner industry. That is the end-game of gender mainstreaming. Not only to make sure that we do a better job integrating both men and women in our economic life, but also to make that the industry becomes a better corporate citizen. Gender mainstreaming will the only hope to get there....

For the south of the Bolivar province - where we hope to implement our ACCC-SENA partnership programs for the small scale gold mining sector - the progress on gender mainstreaming will take a bit more time, because it is such an informal sector there. But SENA already understands the need and principles of gender mainstreaming well. A good start... !

I will leave you today with a beautiful sunset in Cartagena over the Atlantic Ocean....