Diane
Kellogg is the Student Success Coordinator for the Women’s Peacebuilding
Leadership Program and currently in her last semester of the MA program in
Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice
and Peacebuilding. Diane began her work with WPLP as the mentoring
coordinator in 2012. It was through her mentoring research that the first
enhancements to the mentoring program were made. Diane has worked with as
a coordinator for a number of coalitions, with focuses on substance abuse
prevention and youth gang prevention. She has also has experience in program
development, monitoring and evaluation and engaging community collaborations
and mobilization.
Yago: Diane, welcome to this blog where we are engaged in creating
awareness on the energies that keep enslaving humanity. In this interview we
want to talk about the current situation of women and their role in the
peacebuilding field. You are currently the Student Success Coordinator for
Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program (WPLP). This program is an initiative to
empower women to use their gifts in the tasks of building peace. I believe in
the urgent need of integrating women in leadership positions. Still in many
places in today’s world women are excluded from public decision-making,
leadership, and educational opportunities.
Could you share with us the
origin of Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program (WPLP)? How it came into birth?
Diane: The origin of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership
Program (WPLP) grew into existence as there became an increased recognition that women
were missing at higher level peacebuilding leadership positions. The recognition surfaced through papers such
as the 2009 United Nations Development Fund for Women paper, and articles such
as the 2005 article titled “The Role of Women in Peacebuilding” by Lisa Schirch
PhD and Manjrika Sewak, along with what Women peacebuilders from around the
world were experiencing.
In the summer of 2011 11 women from eight national
origins gathered at EMU to discuss the need for a Women’s Peacebuilding
Leadership Program. It was out of that
meeting the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program was birthed.
Yago: Women’s Peacebuilding
Leadership is an infant program. This program is just beginning to explore the
challenging task to trained women peacebuilding leaders in contexts of
conflict. Monitoring and evaluation is fundamental tool in this learning
process. Could you share with us why is so important and the learning obtained
at this stage of the program?
Diane: What comes to mind is, if you know better you do better. When the program was developed it was with
the knowledge that was had at that time. There wasn’t a model to work from so we were creating the model. Through rigorous monitoring and evaluation we
have been able to make some enhancements as we continued to implement the
program and others we designed into the program for the next cohort. The learnings and enhancements that I am most
familiar have to do with, mentoring, the praxis seminar, support group
recognition and the monitoring and evaluation plan. I think the biggest learning is how well the
WPLP staff work together to be responsive to the needs of the program. We are also fortunate to be nested in CJP
with faculty who are equally responsive.
Yago: What has attracted to your current job within the Women’s Peacebuilding leadership Program? Could you share with us the main areas of concern within your responsibility?
Diane: There are many things that attracted me to my current position. I believe in the work we do and the way we do it. I am drawn to development with a strong emphasis on monitoring and evaluation. I like working with a team and I am grateful for the team I work with.
My current responsibilities are, the mentoring component of the program, provide academic support, assist with the implementation of the Praxis Seminar and assist with the redesign of the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan.
Yago: This program gives great
importance to mentoring and coaching dimension. Why is so fundamental? What
challenges are you experiencing in this regard?
Diane: The mentoring component of
WPLP is important for two reasons; first the mentor is a resource available to
the participant as she adds an academic course load into her already busy life, also the mentor helps the women integrate the skills they are learning into the
context they are living and working.
We are currently in our third class of women and
we have used the learnings along the way to develop the current mentoring
component. A couple of the key learnings
we have used in redesigns have to do with the pairing strategy and the
monitoring. The initial paring method was
externally constructed with proximity to each other not being a factor. We now
ask the women to select their own mentor who they can easily meet with. We have also had to revise or monitoring of
the mentored pair. We found that we had
a drop off in our “monthly check-ins” at six months. At this point we lost our ability to monitor
the relationship because of lack in responses. What we learned was it wasn’t that the mentored pair wasn’t meeting, it
was more about asking these already busy women to respond to one more
email. Our solution to increase our
monitoring ability was to incorporate the mentor meetings and questions about
those meetings into the assignments the participants were already doing. This did two things for us; it increased our
monitoring ability and it increased the connection of the mentor into the
program.
Yago: How important it is the
networking among women in this field? What are its benefits?
Diane: Through networking
the women share experiences, resources and support. Networks break the isolation barriers that
are sometimes felt when working in systems and regions that are experiencing
conflict.
Yago: Currently the program includes
women leaders from very different cultural backgrounds (Somaliland, Kenya,
Sierra Leone, South Pacific Islands…). Could you share with us your personal
learning experience of interacting with these women?
Diane: Working with these
woman is very humbling. Although they
come from different cultures there is the same light shining through them. They are courageous, hardworking and
dedicated to bringing more peace to their region. Many are able to balance family, work and
their academics while in this program, and they do so with gratitude.
Yago: WPLP encourages institutional
gender mainstreaming but often the culture of the organizations itself
sabotages it. WPLP sends women into settings where there is a lot of patriarchy
and hierarchy. Women need to be extremely resilient to navigate in such
settings. How important is training for resiliency in WPLP?
Diane: One of the latest additions to our program was developed to
address the settings the women live in, and build resilience within those
settings. We are aware that many of the
women are already challenging cultural norms just by being the leaders they
are. To help the women build resilience
within their settings we believe it was necessary to recognize those
individuals who are closest to them, for the important role they play in
supporting her as she expands her peacebuilding and leadership skills. In doing this we hope to empower the support
structure surrounding the women, and empower the women to use the support
structure they have surrounding them. We
did this by asking the women to give us a list of 10 people who offer the most
support to them. We sent a letter and a
peace dove pin to each of those people, highlighting the important role they
have in the women’s life as she participates in WPLP, and how much they are
appreciated for that role. We have received positive feedback so far from this
gesture, with the support group wearing their peace doves proudly and being
available when needed.
Yago: WPLP needs to be a
gender-sensitive one, men and women have to be working together. Why is so
important that interaction? What are the risks of one gender focus?
Diane: Although our current
cohorts are strictly women we do know that it takes women and men working
together inclusively. We are teaching
the women peacebuilding and leadership theory and skills but many of the women
have male mentors, and many have designated men in their support group. The practice work each women does as part of
the program often involves men. I
believe that two of the changes we have made to the program, allowing the women
to pick their own mentor and recognizing a support group that surrounds the
women has helped WPLP be more gender-sensitive. We also believe it is important to work with mixed gender cohorts, and
look forward to doing that some day.
Yago: Diane, thanks for sharing with us about this prophetic program in the peacebuilding field.
Diane: Thank you Yago for the interview.
