The Garden of Hope Foundation (GOH) is honored to have been invited by UN Women to become a founding member of the Asia Network on Gender-based Violence Prevention and Response!
In view of the serious lag in global gender equality, the UN Forum for Generation Equality has set up a Five-Year Plan for gender equality from 2021 to 2026. This has led UN Women to promote an anti-gender-based violence network in the Asian region; the Garden of Hope Foundation (GOH) was invited as one of the 15 founding members to attend a physical meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in mid-February to discuss the establishment of the network with other founding members.
During the three-day of intensive meetings, we took the opportunity to get to know the details of various Asian organizations and the relevant advocacies they are promoting in their own countries; The members also expressed their goals, visions, and objectives of this innovation network, and discussed in depth how to complete the structure, operation, and connection of the network under this cross-regional composition, and even extended to the formulation of the next planning schedule. All organizations understood how difficult it was to bring about such a physical meeting in the wake of the pandemic, and demonstrated their determination to see the vision through.
In addition, the UN Women’s representative also reported on the current situation in the region and highlighted UN Women’s collaboration with civil society organizations (CSOs) to influence national governments to commit more resources to women’s progress over the long term, ultimately benefiting all three parties:
- UN women promised to empower civil society organizations to raise their confidence and to advise governments on strategic planning.
- CSOs understand the status of the local government the most. Also, they know how to propose advocacies to influence their governments, and after the governments input resources, CSOs could perform their service plans and give feedback to UN Women.
- Governments could earn support from their own people because of good performance.
The three days of intensive discussions yielded fruitful results. The initial consensus of the founding members of the network was reached, and the timetable to be reached for this year was established. Members of various organizations actively joined various working groups, fully expressing their determination to combat gender-based violence in Asia! On the last night, the founding members attended the 30th-anniversary dinner of the Asia Pacific Women’s Resource Research Centre (ARROW) and saw the cultural richness of the trans-regional network.
