GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

1. International Women’s Week Event
The event, organized on 2 – 3 March 2003, comprised two parts.
The first part was the award presentation ceremony in which 10 outstanding women and two outstanding organizations received the Prime Ministers’ plaques for their outstanding contribution to the national development and for women’s cause. These awardees later shared their experiences in discussion sessions. The second part entitled New Thoughts, New Actions on Women featured panel discussions on issues related to domestic violence, promoting the status of women and gender equality. Participated in the event were about 1,000 people including women grassroots leaders, representatives from the government and the private sectors, women and men from communities in Bangkok, academicians and the media.

2. Setting up a gender responsive documentation system on violence against women and children.

With the support from Philip Morris (Thailand) Limited, the Gender and Development Research Institute initiated a project to provide systematic documentation on violence cases. The data compiled are expected to be utilized for further research and study on violence, awareness raising as well as public policy formulation. Presentation of data and information on violence against women can be viewed on the GDRI website. (www. gdrif.org)

3. Seminar Series on Moving towards Non-Violent Communities
The Gender and Development Research Institute organized a series of seminars on domestic violence issues in Bangkok and in four regions of the country during November and December 2003. The Bangkok seminar on 25 November saw over 1,200 participants. For the regional seminars, the purpose was to raise an awareness of the local administration bodies at the sub-district level (Sub-district Administrative Organizations) to pay greater attention on domestic violence. Action plans for community involvement in the prevention and intervention of domestic violence cases, with budget allocation were developed by the participants. Implementation and follow-ups would be carried out in 2004.

There were altogether about 500 participants from 118 Sub-district Administrative Organizations participating

4. Gender training
With gender training expertise available, gender trainers of the GDRI were involved in a series of gender training organized by different government organizations under their capacity building programs to support the gender equality promotion program of the government sector.

One gender training was conducted for new staff members of the APSW in September 2003.