This training is aimed at existing and potential new microfinance providers who want to learn about gender and gender planning, its relevance to the field of microfinance, look at examples of practice and consider how they can implement the learning into their existing or developing practice.

It may also be useful for researchers who can help to fill the gaps in our knowledge and work with practitioners to develop tools to capture data on gender and microfinance.

The Training will look at the following areas:

Section 1: A historical perspective of gender and gender planning

This section looks at how gender sits with the economic and social development agendas, the different approaches to gender and planning and what has been the progress with gender globally to date. This section will also look at how bringing a focus onto gender is linked with the work towards achieving the millennium development goals and how it fits with EU policies.

Section 2: Why is gender important?

A high percentage of clients and potential cleints of microcredit programmes are women and this is why gender is of such relevance to the microfinance sector and programmes. This section looks at the economic and social case for ensuring that gender planning is included in the process of developing or expanding any microfinance programmes. Also brought into this section is some focus on gender and faith to raise awareness of the needs of faith communities.

Section 3: Gender Focus training developed by Prowess

We all carry with us an individual perspective on gender and we need to be aware of this and how it affects the practices of our work in designing programmes and in our direct work with clients. This section introduces projects that have a degree of gender perspective in their work and will look both at good and bad examples of practice. This section provides an interactive session where participants will be able to share experiences from their own work, examine their own practice and look at how gender planning can be developed in programmes.

Section 4: Marketing with a gender perspective

While it is important that you have a gender focus in your microcredit programme what is also important is that it is marketed to your potential clients. This section contains elements of marketing training developed by Prowess. This section also looks at how we can measure performance of microfinance programmes in regards to gender and how we can develop tools in this area for impact measurement and analysis. This area will cover the elements of the Prowess Flagship status evaluation process as one method of measuring a gender perspective.