Testimonial by Christa Giesecke about "Gender Specialist Foundations"

February 17, 2023

This blog post was written by Christa Giesecke, who participated in the Gender Specialist Foundations course with Lindsey Jones-Renaud and Afaf Ahmad Al-Khoshman in January-February 2023.

I was privileged to participate in Cynara’s week-long Gender Specialist Foundations: Core concepts, emerging trends, and practical tools training. With thoughtful guidance and instruction from facilitators Lindsey Jones-Renaud, Cynara’s Founder and Principal Facilitator, and Afaf Ahmad Al-Khoshman, Researcher and Teacher, fellow participants and I explored intersectionality, the historical roots of colonialism and neocolonialism on gender relations, and relationships of power.

In learning from the thoughts and experiences of my global cohort of peers, I formed more nuanced insights and was equipped with practical tools and skills to apply this knowledge to conduct gender analyses as well as monitoring and evaluation for gender within international development projects.

Particularly striking and thought-provoking were the discussions around power and inequality generated through analyzing the cartoons by Tekarts Cartoons in small groups. In depicting various types and forms of power (power over, power within, power together, etc.), these images help participants to think through various layers of power dynamics and develop a more comprehensive understanding of intersectionality. 

I highly recommend this Gender Specialist Foundations course as an excellent starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the intricacies of gender, power, and race relations, and how they impact the every day operations of international development organizations.

In particular, this training gives participants the vocabulary and framework to understand intersectionality, call out power imbalances, and begin to conduct gender and gap analyses, as well as monitoring and evaluation for gender programming.

As a young professional interested in developing further gender technical skills, I appreciated the opportunity this course provided for knowledge sharing with interesting colleagues and practical application. 

As a result of this training, I am grateful to have developed a stronger intersectional framework to recognize power imbalances, as well as the vocabulary and tools to name and address these disparities, which I hope to apply as I continue to develop my expertise as a gender specialist.

Thank you, Cynara!

~ Christa Giesecke, Gender and Education Specialist

Learn more about the Gender Specialist Foundations course at this here. Dates for the next session are pending, so sign up for email updates here to get the latest news.