Dear friends,
Warm greetings from Bangkok! We hope you and the people around you are doing well in these challenging times. For our part, we are grateful for the privilege of having homes, computers, and jobs that allow us to work from home - a privilege that the vast majority of the world's workers do not have.
Here at the GAATW International Secretariat we started the year with a mix of excitement and anxiety . We were excited to have our newly developed strategic plan and a clearer vision for our work in the next five years. We were anxious that some experienced colleagues had left the organisation at the end of 2019 and we were about to hire several new colleagues (see more below, under News from the GAATW Secretariat).
Now, in early May , these emotions have remained but changed somewhat. Our newly hired colleagues arrived in Bangkok just before the start of lockdowns, physical distancing and work from home measures. In mid-March we organised four half-day sessions for orientation of the new staff over Zoom. It was odd but worked well. The new colleagues are settling well, and the team has already built cohesion. In April, we formed an internal study group to learn more about the methodology of popular education and critical literacy first developed by Paulo Freire in the 1970s. The study group will analyse and discuss the points of convergence between Feminist Participatory Action Research, a methodology we have been using since our inception, and Popular Education. With new projects starting or due to start in the coming months, our aim is create learning materials to use in some of our work with migrant and trafficked women and marginalised communities. We are excited about the new team and these future work plans.