Writing from the Inside – Stories of Hope and Change
In 2004 Gender at Work started a Gender Action Learning (GAL) process with six organizations in South Africa. Three of these organizations wrote about their organizational change stories in "Change is a Slow Dance". From 2008 to February 2010, Gender at Work undertook a "deepening" process with four of these six organizations (JAW, SACCAWU, TAC, WFP) and started a new process with four community-based organizations (Kganya Consortium, REMMOHO, Vukani, Sikhula Sonke). The authors of this collection of stories were participants in these two processes.
Written by participants and facilitators these are stories of personal experiences of change during the GAL program. What is most striking about all the stories is the authors' resilience and sense of wholeness despite sometimes excruciating histories. The context is often painful and difficult – yet all the authors refer to moments of transformation and hope. Since there is such a scarcity of writings by grassroots activists, these stories contribute towards a sharing of experience that can inspire hope, innovation, resilience and the capacity to overcome what may appear as impossible constraints.
