Policy Forum is currently training its two Working Groups (Budget Working Group and Local Government Working Group) and other stakeholders to hone their skills and knowledge pertaining to gender responsive budgeting from 19 to 22, April 2021.

For several years Policy Forum has been capacitating its members working groups on the Gender Responsive Budgeting Analysis (GRBA) and on a framework for packaging results from the analysis in a way that stimulates policy dialogue and change. Due to time constraints, these members have been partially introduced to the eight steps and seven tools associated with the GRBA. The unprecedented effects of the limited time allocated for such trainings is that, the members have demonstrated a minimal applicability of their acquired skills. For instance, the members have been using only one tool which is the gender disaggregated public expenditure analysis tool.

The knowledge on GRBA steps highlight the need for better preparation to complete the analysis exercise. The GRBA tools are not only a requirement in a single gender analysis, but some of them also require technical competencies in econometrics and statistical analysis while others focus more on content or textual analysis. Additionally, each tool focuses on a specific aspect of gender budget such as tax incidence on women and men, unit cost of government spending on women and men.

Henceforth, given the importance of the knowledge and to cement on what members had acquired from the last training it is salient that members and other stakeholders are further equipped on the steps and technical tools which will assist them to carryout out GRBA even better and thus be able to form strong grounds of advocacy to influence policy changes in at the national and local level.

A participatory model of delivery will be use used throughout the training to equip members and other stakeholders on the steps and tools which will assist in carrying out GRBA better to strengthen participants’ advocacy skills to influence policy and processes. This model will enable participants to have meaningful engagements during and after the event.

There will be on-going monitoring activities to ensure that the training has an impact to attendees in their day-to-day activities. Policy Forum will track interventions from CSOs attending the training to document success stories.