Members of the Solidarity Visit

In the "funding for women's programs" workshop, I was disturbed to discover the extent to which women, not only in Canada, but throughout the world, are struggling to obtain financial support. Some funding agencies themselves are facing reduced budgets, while others are no longer interested in hearing about women's needs. Strategic, long term and operational funding has been replaced by inadequate short term project funding. Also of concern in the workshop were the contradictions and tensions inherent in the funding relationship. We generated a list of strategies for dealing with this new funding context, which included working collectively, diversifying our funding bases, linking up with alternative markets, and developing partnerships and solidarity links between north and south women's organizations.

I spoke at the workshop about the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in influencing public policy, which was attended by over 25 people from many different countries and NGOs. I presented the work of CCLOW as a case study, and began by outlining the conclusions and recommendations from Wismer's³ study. I then moved on to focus on the Women's Employment and Training Coalition (WETC), a coalition in Vancouver which the BC network helped to organize. Another case study was presented by Cathy Wright, from the Canadian Association for Adult Education, who discussed the lobbying effort which helped put literacy on the political agenda in Canada.

We asked those attending to describe their attempts to influence government policy. Participants and speakers emphasized many of the same themes, namely the need to articulate a clear position backed by good research, to establish credibility, to build coalitions, to maintain links with the grass roots, to maintain independence from government and to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of suggested policies. I was pleased to present some of CCLOW's research to an international audience, many of whom found it useful for their own work.

TASK FORCE ON PARTICIPATION OF
WOMEN IN ICAE STRUCTURES

Although women's participation reached a high (45%) at this assembly, women's voices are still in the minority at the decision making levels of the ICAE. There are now 7 women out of a total 29 members of the Executive Committee. In response to this under-representation, a task force was created in 1989 to study and suggest ways in which women's participation in all of ICAE structures can be strengthened.