On the 28^th January 2016 the IFRC team in Bangkok, together with representatives from American Red Cross and Thai Red Cross will take part in a one-day gender and diversity awareness training.  In the past few years IFRC and National Societies have been making gender and diversity more and more of a priority. Although not a new concept, it is important that gender and diversity is applied in a systematic and strategic way across all programmes, projects and services. It is important that for us at IFRC we strengthen our own capacity and understanding of gender and diversity concepts and its practical application to support the work of National Societies in the region.

Gender and diversity spans all levels of the IFRC and across all sectors, being integrated into every area of our work. Gender and diversity forms one of the cross cutting issues of our SEA Resilience House Model [see opposite picture] which highlights the approach as an essential component to ensuring National Societies and communities are well prepared to respond to disasters and health emergencies. It also plays a large role in the dignity, protection and safety of migrant populations and is an important consideration in national and regional legal frameworks to ensure we are accountable to all groups in a population and that we respond to needs in the most effective and efficient way. It is also important that we are able to support National Societies through humanitarian diplomacy to position them well to address gender and diversity both within the National Society and externally, including helping them communicate good practice and lessons learnt. Vital, is working with our youth and volunteers to be change agents through dissemination of the key messages within our communities.

The training will be based on the IFRC 7 Moves to gender and diversity with the aim to provide:

• an introduction to the core concepts of gender, diversity and sexual and gender-based violence;
• key frameworks and strategies that exist within the IFRC;
• gender and diversity indicators and considerations
• practical guidance to ensure that we deliver our work with a gender and diversity approach.

More information on the training: See concept note | agenda | practical information | participant list