Institute of Development Studies

Contextualising gender knowledge for Latin American audiences - working in partnership with Uruguayan NGO CIEDUR

14 February 2012 - Paola Brambilla

For many years the BRIDGE team in IDS Knowledge Services has made its work available in other languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. But was it enough?

How can BRIDGE translated materials really speak to non-English audiences?

Evidence and feedback from users proved that simply translating a text aimed at audiences based in English-speaking regions was not always enough for audiences based in non-English speaking regions. In fact, what would be as valuable as translating our materials into the language of a non-English-speaking region, we were told, would be adding additional case studies, research, good practice examples, and evaluation reports based on experiences from that region.

In response to this, last year BRIDGE started a project in partnership with the gender and development section of CIEDUR, an NGO based in Uruguay. The aim was to work together to synthesise and complement each other’s work and make it relevant and accessible to Spanish speaking audiences in Latin America.

By joining forces, BRIDGE and CIEDUR have created a solid platform which supports the sharing of research and knowledge in the region to policy-makers and practitioners.  The platform is contributing towards gender equality, poverty reduction and social justice in the region and aims to have an extensive and sustainable impact on policy and practice.

An innovative approach to knowledge sharing: SendasAL

SendasAL provides a new web space in Spanish that hosts materials from BRIDGE Cutting Edge Programmes and resources identified by Ciedur on the same thematic areas and produced by Latin American organisations, governments and institutions. Such resources include case studies, good practice examples, research papers and reports. The site is constantly updated with new materials and is connected to an active community of users through Twitter and Facebook. SendasAL is currently featuring pages on gender sensitive indicators, care and the care economy and gender and governance.

We are currently planning to add pages on the gender implications of climate change and a special web interactive space on the Rio+20 summit from the Latin America gender community perspective.

SendasAL has already received very positive feedback. In as far as producing multilingual materials, we in BRIDGE believe this is the way forward:

"I want to thank you for SendasAL. It is an essential tool for my work here in the Women’s Ministry in Peru"

We are currently applying the same principles to a version of the Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Climate Change targeting Francophone audiences.

For more information, contact Paola Brambilla.

Paola Brambilla is Editorial Projects Coordinator with BRIDGE and IDS Knowledge Services