While in Malaysia I do more that eat and travel. I volunteer with Malaysian NGOs as a "free lance volunteer" and work on projects where I am needed. AWAM (All Women's Action Society) suggested that I help with the anti-sexual harassment (SHout-Sexual Harassment Out) campaign. I hope that I have been helpful. Personally I have benefited; I have learned more about sexual harassment, national campaigns, and how NGOs work together.
Sexual harassment is related to my previous volunteer experience, i.e., in 1972 I helped found the DC (US) Rape Crisis Center and published a few articles on the organization of rape crisis centers. Recently I have studied collaborations among NGOs.
I put "sexual harassment campaigns" in Google Alerts to learn what was going on in the world - eventually I ended the alerts, but not before I learned discovered Egypt's Harassmap, an on-line real time map that tracks and categorizes incidents of sexual harassment. Its website is mesmerizing. It includes the map, twitter feeds, details of incidents, and research links.
Another discovery was Pakistan's AASHA (An Alliance Against Sexual Harassment); at its website one can click on an employer's name and find out if it has a sexual harassment policy and what it is. When I revisited the site my computer suffered a major virus - so I did not include a link. In New Zealand the Union of Students' Associations surveyed sexual harassment policies at public universities, student perceptions of relationship violence, and audits of campus crime.
On to Malaysia: SHout has challenges faced by collaborations everywhere, beginning with finding a common meeting time (virtually impossible). Organization representatives may vary from meeting to meeting. Organizations may vary in their level of involvement (SHout recognized and accepted these variations as the collaboration formed). Questions of involving individuals independent of the member organizations and who sponsors an activity (the collaboration or a member organization) need to be resolved. SHout, as do other Malaysian collaborations, has a secretariat (AWAM) which does the day to day work and manages communications. (A research question is whether models used to explain staff-board relations can also explain the dynamics of secretariat-member organization relations.)
Despite the secretariat's and members' crowded agenda progress has been made. The probability of a federal anti-sexual harassment policy looks good, probably because the collaboration includes lawyers and activists with a history of working with public agencies to promote a women's agenda. The collaboration has an expertise on training and outreach, and it plans to take advantage of technology and social networks to move the campaign to the "next level." A first step has been establishing a facebook page. Meetings during the next two months should fill in the details.
What I have learned demonstrates that researchers should not assume that a failure at time 1 does not preclude later successes. Changes in the political and social environment allowed SHout to take up an anti-sexual harassment campaign that had been unsuccessful a decade earlier.
Sexual harassment is related to my previous volunteer experience, i.e., in 1972 I helped found the DC (US) Rape Crisis Center and published a few articles on the organization of rape crisis centers. Recently I have studied collaborations among NGOs.
I put "sexual harassment campaigns" in Google Alerts to learn what was going on in the world - eventually I ended the alerts, but not before I learned discovered Egypt's Harassmap, an on-line real time map that tracks and categorizes incidents of sexual harassment. Its website is mesmerizing. It includes the map, twitter feeds, details of incidents, and research links.
Another discovery was Pakistan's AASHA (An Alliance Against Sexual Harassment); at its website one can click on an employer's name and find out if it has a sexual harassment policy and what it is. When I revisited the site my computer suffered a major virus - so I did not include a link. In New Zealand the Union of Students' Associations surveyed sexual harassment policies at public universities, student perceptions of relationship violence, and audits of campus crime.
On to Malaysia: SHout has challenges faced by collaborations everywhere, beginning with finding a common meeting time (virtually impossible). Organization representatives may vary from meeting to meeting. Organizations may vary in their level of involvement (SHout recognized and accepted these variations as the collaboration formed). Questions of involving individuals independent of the member organizations and who sponsors an activity (the collaboration or a member organization) need to be resolved. SHout, as do other Malaysian collaborations, has a secretariat (AWAM) which does the day to day work and manages communications. (A research question is whether models used to explain staff-board relations can also explain the dynamics of secretariat-member organization relations.)
Despite the secretariat's and members' crowded agenda progress has been made. The probability of a federal anti-sexual harassment policy looks good, probably because the collaboration includes lawyers and activists with a history of working with public agencies to promote a women's agenda. The collaboration has an expertise on training and outreach, and it plans to take advantage of technology and social networks to move the campaign to the "next level." A first step has been establishing a facebook page. Meetings during the next two months should fill in the details.
What I have learned demonstrates that researchers should not assume that a failure at time 1 does not preclude later successes. Changes in the political and social environment allowed SHout to take up an anti-sexual harassment campaign that had been unsuccessful a decade earlier.
A case study on Tanzania Media Women Association anti-sexual harassment campaign can be found at POLICY ADVOCACY: THE CASE OF TANZANIA MEDIA WOMEN
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