The Gender Festival
is an open forum for likeminded individuals and organizations that come
together to share experiences and knowledge, to celebrate achievements,
assess challenges ahead, to strengthen networking and coalition building,
to build capacity and to contribute to public debate. In Tanzania the
festival has been held since 1996 as an annual event, but has over time
evolved into a bi annual event. The forum aims to bring together people
interested in gender, for the purpose of activism and information sharing
on pertinent gender issues.
Kenya's Gender Festival
is scheduled to take place from 15th
to 17th April 2009
at the Nairobi University's graduation grounds.
The Festival, the first of its kind in Kenya is expected to attract
daily participation of approximately four hundred invited participants
from all over the country. Participants are drawn from civil society
organizations, Government, community based organizations, development
partners and also the University of Nairobi community.
It is organized towards
interrogation of activities and responses of the gender and women's
movement to pertinent societal issues, strengthening linkages and responses
of the women's movement to various legal and policy frameworks dealing
with women's and human rights as well as exploring ways of increasing
accountability of the movement and its duty bearers to its constituents.
The overall theme of
this year's Kenya's Gender Festival is "Celebrate Diversity
and Promote Gender Equality"
and the sub-themes are as follows:
- Healing,
peace building and unity;
- Women
movement-building in a diverse society;
- Men
for cultural diversity and gender equality.