Network of Practitioners
Equalinrights exists to empower organisations and practitioners engaged in the struggle against poverty. One of the organisation's first initiatives was identify and build relationships with leading practitioners working to advance human rights-based development (HRBD) in the global South, particularly at the local and national levels. Read more about how equalinrights built and has used this "Database of Resource Persons".
The 60-some individuals with whom equalinrights connected - both organisational representatives and independent consultants - form the core of a multi-disciplinary network with expertise on topics such as ESCR, gender equity, human rights-based programming, human rights standards and mechanisms, social mobilisation, conflict transformation and organisational development. Equalinrights' work would not be possible without this "Network of Practitioners", which grounds our work in the realities of those living in poverty and exclusion. In that sense, the Network of Practitioners is equalinrights.
Equalinrights connects practitioners from our network to other organisations, people and resources, promotes their work and facilitates learning processes with them. Through these activities, we seek to realise our mission of helping the impoverished and excluded to better organise, strategize and act to assert their human rights.
Practitioner Profiles
Mwambi Mwasaru, Kenya
HRBD Consultant
Mwambi has 25 years experience in the formal and non-formal education sector. Particularly interested in the nexus between rights and development, he strives to understand social change through inter-disciplinary study including philosophy, theology, sociology, law, human rights, organisational development and adult education in the tradition of Paulo Freire. Mwambi has worked for the Development Education of Leadership Teams in Action (DELTA), the Legal Advice/Kituo Cha Sheria, the Coast Rural Support Program, and the Rights and Participation Project of the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). He was formerly a Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Program of the Harvard Law School and Acting Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. He currently lectures on community development and advocacy at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. Read here Mwambi's full profile
Jumanah Zabaneh, Lebanon
Child Rights Specialist
Jumanah is the Regional Program Manager for Education and emergencies within Save the Children Sweden Regional office for the Middle East and North Africa. Part of her duties include working with refugee children across the region, and includes providing refugee children from Somalia, Palestine and Iraq with access to quality education and protection from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. In addition Jumanah is an International Advisor with the Child-to-Child Trust involved and in a global project that aims to increase child readiness for school. The project is in partnership with UNICEF-NY and relies on children as active contributors to the Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).Read Jumanah's Full Profile.
Outlook for Phase II: Strengthening the network through "Communities of Practice"
A primary goal of equalinrights in Phase II is to strengthen a longer term network structure that will enable us to have far greater presence as a facilitator in the global South, increasing our proximity to men and women living in poverty while not infringing on space of local organisations. We have identified Communities of Practice as an effective mechanism to do this. This is an optimal model through which we can also deepen our understanding of local development processes, initiate our activities, strengthen local capacity, forge relationships, and identify gaps and opportunities for engagement.
We propose to assemble a network of local practitioners engaged in a continual cycle of learning and action that strengthens their own capacity as well as stimulates and influences further learning processes that they facilitate within communities/organisations with which they work. These are practitioners already working on the ground with local and nationally based communities. Each different focus that emerges will evolve into a Community of Practice or Sub-Community – that will be linked back through documentation and exchange into the primary Community of Practice – learning for upstream realisation of human rights.
In the long-term we envisage a lively network of local Communities of Practice grouped around local activity and development agendas. However, the organic nature of Communities of Practice is that they start small and grow from the innovative strategies and activities that emerge from the practitioners themselves. They start one community at a time and spread as people see the value. An initial CoP may well splinter off into several smaller communities where activity is centred on significant shared concerns or ideas that have sprung from the early interactions. The vision is one of a dynamic and self-evolving learning process that grows and develops with the inclusion of more engaged and motivated practitioners. Ultimately however, these Communities are a strategic initiative for equalinrights that will require a number of enabling structures to integrate the work into practical action and feed into the development agenda.
