After the conference

The Rio world symposium is over now and having recovered from flights and loss of sleep I am trying to assemble my thoughts and feelings about this experience and the outcomes.

The symposium produced a final document - the draft of which can be viewed by following the links on the MenEngage website. In general it is a good piece of work and reflects well the discussion and presentations at Rio. In fact it is quite remarkable that the committee drafting the "declaration -call for action" was able to be so thorough and comprehensive in such a short time. The document reflects the important balance between challenging men's behavious to others and themselves with responding to men from a position of respect and caring. I think the document sets the right tone.

I am proud of this final work and I do not regret attending the symposium (there were only 4-5 delegations from Canada outside of all the White Ribbon guys there) but I wish I could have felt more a part of the process. Most of the time there was little room for discussion with panel members and speakers, when there were questions from the floor they were just compiled and not usually directly responded to, there were preset committees organized to create the final document and many of these people had been workshop presenters. In short - I wish there had been more "engagement'. The final document was a good one but anyone familiar with community organizing understands that people are more likely to act on something if they felt a part of it's creation.

Once the final declaration is no longer a draft document I will be contacting the local press to let them know about this symposium and it's outcomes.

A Policy Conference

The Internet was not working reliably yesterday - that is probably a good thing as all I felt was annoyance and that does not make for a very good read. The plenary and workshops sessions of almost all of the symposium to date have been dominated by presentations of research, doctoral dissertaions and policy development wonks. Yesterday, after listening to a droning panel go well past their alloted time the moderator cheerfully informed us that "Sorry we have not time for questions or interactions but remember this is a policy conference anyway". What did that mean? Policy does not require discussion? And nobody informed the hundreds of grassroots workers here that we were just present to provide legitimacy to policy initiatives at the UN.

I did enjoy my time in the Global Village. Got to display some of the materials and events that the Saskatoon MRC has used and been involved with in our five years. The room was a little like a feeding frenzy at a shark tank when it first opened up and I found that as soon as I looked away materials that were labelled "for display only" soon disapeared. One delegate from England remarked that I should take it as a compliment that people are interested in what we have to say.

There are some of the same old arguments between women and men on the pleanary floor. Worries about men's programming detracting from womens funding, reminders that the women's movement should always have final approval over new initiatives, men complaining that they get sidelined .... The positive thing is that these speakers are few and far between and generally there is remarkable agreement about the need to engage with men if we want to start making some real changes on violence against women, HIV-AIDS and with childcare and parenting.