The Gender Blog

Rainbow House (RH) is El Shaddai’s residential home for girls aged 8-13 (when they’re aged 2-7, they live next door, at House of Kathleen, and there are two similar homes in the area for boys) and is currently home to 51 girls, including my sponsored “daughter” Renuka. The children sleep in bunk-bedded dormitories and are cared for by four full time staff plus Stella,  the manager.

(One thing I always have to remember when thinking about what to buy Renuka is that each child has relatively little private space in which to store things;  they each have a small, cube shaped locker and access to a hanging rail for their clothes,  and that’s it).

The children are organised into groups and Stella tells me that this is to help to teach them teamwork, responsibility and leadership. The teams are named Love, Joy, Peace and Kindness and each team has a colour which they then wear as part of their school uniform.  Renuka is in the “Love” group and their colour is red,  so she wears a red polo shirt for school and always tries to choose red clothes from the communal pile in her dormitory.  Most recently, I’ve seen her in a red Bayern Munich t-shirt and a red swimsuit bearing the Welsh flag …

Part of the way in which the charity aims to teach responsibility is by making the children part of the routine of the home; for them,  it’s more than just a boarding school environment – they are part of the very fabric of the place. And they have a long and busy day,  Monday to Friday: this is their daily routine irrespective of age.

5.45am                        Alarm call and wake up.

6.00am                        Morning prayers; apparently, these are non-denominational and mostly consist of saying “thank you” to an unnamed god or presence.

6.15 – 7am                  “Duty” – this means undertaking chores of various sorts: cooking, cleaning, laundry and so on. Each group is part of a rota and will do different things each week; one evening when I visited,  Renuka emerged from the kitchen covered in flour, as the Love group had evening duty – making chapattis.

7.00 – 7.30am             Breakfast – as prepared by that day’s duty team, who will also have organised the tiffin (lunch) tins too.

7.30 – 8.30am             Wash and dress for school; the uniform is either a pleated skirt or shorts,  topped off with an appropriately coloured polo shirt, and sandals.

8.30 – 8.45am             Medicine: many of the children have ongoing medical issues due to their previous itinerant lifestyles and poor nutrition,  so Stella lines them up at this time and gives them their medications.

8.45am                        Uniform check: are you neat and tidy? Is your hair brushed? Then off you go to school! The children travel by mini-bus, as donated by a British based charity.

9.00 – 4.30pm             At El Shaddai’s own private Shanti Niketan school,  the children are organised into groups on the basis of ability rather than age – so Renuka,  for example, aged 9 and good at maths,  is in a class with children of 12, 13 and 14. All lessons are taught in English,  which is the common language; the children end up in Goa from all over India and many have other languages as their first tongue,  but school work is always done in English. 

At 12 noon,  they break for lunch,  which they eat, seated, from the tiffin tins.

5.00 – 7.00pm             The children arrive back at RH and evening duty commences for the relevant team.  This is also visiting time for sponsors and interested tourists,  so there’s always a stream of people calling into both RH and HoK, sitting on the veranda and playing with the children.

7.00 – 7.30pm             Prayers, followed by dinner.  This is usually vegetarian food (rice and dal, or a vegetable pullao) but they have meat once a week for those who eat it. They sometimes also have laddu, a very sweet Indian pudding; Renuka told me proudly that she is “the very best” at making this.    

7.30 – 8.00pm            More duty – washing up!

8.00pm                        Homework

9.00pm                        Bedtime; lights out by 10.30pm.

At the weekends,  the regime is a little more relaxed,  although the children still have “duty” in the morning; yesterday,  they were washing sheets.  However,  in the afternoon,  it’s the highlight of the week,  when they all pile into the mini-bus for a trip to the beach; they absolutely love this and it’s truly wonderful to see them have a chance to be children.

El Shaddai set up camp on the beach, and,  with a great flair for strategy, take the charity to the people. They have very cleverly realised that the children are their best ambassadors and so simply seeing the kids playing on the beach and splashing in the sea (as opposed to begging or selling jewellery) can give people an awareness of how different life can be with the assistance of ES and other charities.

The afternoon follows a loose structure. Having blown up numerous pairs of armbands and rubber rings, we all charge into the sea and play in the waves (at one point,  I had three small girls hanging off each of my arms). Then it’s out onto the sand for a bit,  with some organised races (relay running,  bunny hopping and so on) and a sand castle building competition. 

The staff then chop up some of the huge pile of fruit donated by the visitors and the children dig in to slices of pineapple and chunks of watermelon;  there’s usually so much left that all four homes can have fruit for the rest of the week.

I was particularly pleased to see so many men joining in and playing with the kids,  as these children really need strong male role models; many of them have been abandoned by their fathers,  or mistreated, victims of neglect, violence and alcohol. And whilst they don’t lack for love and care from the (mostly female) ES staff,  there are fewer men around to provide an alternative view of masculinity,  so the work that these guys do is hugely important, I think,  for both boys and girls. They need to know and see that men can be kind, gentle, playful and fun – all qualities in great abundance at the beach.

Finally,  it’s one last play in the sea – much shrieking of “the big wave! The big wave!!” – before we get dressed, pack up toys, equipment, leaflets, banners and fruit and return back home.

Great fun – and I get to do it all over again today.  I had planned to pack to come home,  but Renuka had remembered that my flight back is actually on Monday and so could see no valid reason at all why I shouldn’t come to the beach on Sunday … so that’s where I’ll be.  Can’t wait.

Namaste from Goa, where I am currently on Day Three of my stay – I’m loving being back and I’m also enjoying weather which is approximately 30 degrees (C) warmer than in London. I mentioned last month that this was my snowy outlook in early January; well, fast forward a month or so and here’s my view today:

(Yes, I know that “cows on the beach” are something of a cliché in India, but I do think that the little calf is very cute).

I’m staying in a local guest house just behind the beach, and I’ve negotiated a deal with the Goan Portuguese owner that I will help him write copy for his forthcoming website in return for unlimited access to his wireless internet – so I’m currently holed up in a corner of his bar/restaurant area, typing away, feeling hot (because my laptop is plugged in where the fan normally resides) and ignoring the curious looks from passersby.

When I first sat down and booted up, I was surrounded by six waiters, all unabashedly staring at my screen and asking me why I wasn’t sunbathing (“You are on holiday, madam! Not working!”). After trying and failing to explain “blogging”, I reached for my Hindi dictionary and announced that I am a “patrakar” [journalist] which they seemed to get (“newspaper, yes?”) and now they’re leaving me to it, just popping over occasionally to ask if I’d like a fresh lime soda.

My post about Renuka, the little girl I sponsor here in Goa, received a huge amount of hits and comments, both on and offline, the most usual one being “can you tell me more about how I can sponsor a child?” . In response, I’d like to direct you to a couple of websites.

The first one is for the El Shaddai Child Rescue charity – this is a local Goan charity which I’ve supported for a good few years and which now has an option to sponsor a child. Just follow this link and you can see details of the children (both girls and boys) and filter them by age. I notice that the sponsorship model has changed a little since I signed up, so you can now opt to make a one off donation to a specific child too, or purchase a particular item (school books, a cow, a bicycle, care for an HIV+ child) through the “Gift a Smile” option.

Obviously, El Shaddai operates in India, a country very dear to my heart for many years, hence choosing to sponsor a child here. If you’d like to consider helping children in other countries, then I’d suggest you check out Plan, described on their website as:

“ … one of the largest child-centred community development organisations in the world, helping children and their families in 48 of the poorest countries to break the cycle of poverty”.

I raised over £300 for Plan’s “Because I Am a Girl” campaign last October and I’ve also blogged about their recently published book, so hands up – I’m a fan, and the only reason that I haven’t yet sponsored a child via Plan too is due to my current “sabbatical” – but I’ll be on board as soon as I’m working again. The link is here and you can choose the region in which you’d like to support a child – Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc, or allow Plan to choose for you dependent upon need.

Oh,  and – while I’m writing about Plan, there are some photos of the recent book launch event for “Because I Am a Girl” up here on their Flickr site, complete with one of the back of my head.

Mentioning heads – a gentleman has just walked by, balancing a tower of cushions on his head. I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore, but I am going to quit now before the usual “this time of day” Indian power cut kicks in.

“Because I am a girl  – I am less likely to go to school.

Because I am a girl – I am more likely to suffer from malnutrition.

Because I am a girl – I am more likely to suffer violence in the home.

Because I am a girl – I am more likely to marry and start a family before I reach my twenties.

Seven authors have visited seven different countries and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes. Proceeds from sales of this book will go to PLAN, one of the world’s largest child-centered community development organisations.”

And last week I attended the very moving launch of the “Because I Am A Girl” book at Waterstones in Piccadilly. I bought four copies and have since read my own copy twice.  From my time in corporate life,  I know how powerful story telling can be as a way to get a message across; this collection of stories (which are both fiction and non-fiction) is part of Plan’s campaign to raise awareness and break the cycle of poverty which so impacts women,  by educating girls and investing in women.  As Marie Staunton,  Plan’s Chief Executive, said at the launch event:

“Girls are often invisible in the developing world – and because they’re not valued, they don’t feel valued.  They’re less likely to go to school than boys, more likely to experience violence, poverty and sexual abuse …”

The stories are set in Togo, Sierra Leone, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ghana, Uganda and Cambodia and the book features contributions from renowned authors such as Kathy Lette, Deborah Moggach (who were both at the launch, and who signed my copies of the book), Irvine Welsh and Joanne Harris.  As well as Marie’s very moving descriptions of Plan’s work,  we were also able to hear Kathy and Deborah reading extracts from their stories. Actors and Plan supporters Larry Lamb (who had just returned to the UK from a week in Senegal for Plan; the next evening I saw him on TV at the National Television Awards … talk about a diverse life …) and Joanne Froggatt read from the stories set in Togo and Santa Domingo in the DR.

Here’s an extract from Kathy Lette’s story about her trip to Brazil:

“I wanted to tell the story of one girl. But all the girls I met – Maria, Jeanine, Rosana, Lorena, Amanda, Marina, Cintia, Melissa, Nataly, Teresa, Ana and Johanna – had the same sad tale. It’s a story of child prostitution, teenage pregnancy, HIV, no contraception, illegal back-street abortion, sex tourism, single mothers, macho men, irresponsible, absentee fathers and domestic violence.”  

The book also features, as the other non-fiction contribution, a very damning piece from Marie Phillips (author of “Gods Behaving Badly”,  a really wonderful novel) based on her visit to Uganda and her shock at how the responsibility for sexual abuse is placed on girls and not their attackers. I think this was a brave stance for Plan to take,  in terms of including it in the anthology; I’m sure it would have been easier to leave it out,  or ask Marie to re-visit her article and change the focus.  Instead,  it is included,  as is a piece from Plan’s Uganda Country Manager, explaining why Plan takes the stance that they do and what impact this having for girls in the country to date.

At the end of the readings,  we had an opportunity to ask questions and an audience member asked Marie Staunton how she would spend £10,000 and make a difference. Looking a little taken aback,  she immediately passed the question over to two of her team,  the Plan Country Managers for India and Uganda,  who both replied that they would like to spend such money on extra, separate toilet facilities for schools,  as the lack of toilets is often an issue for girls,  especially when menstruating; the Uganda manager also told us that many schools in her country are boarding schools in remote rural areas and so she would like more money to spend on bicycles to make it easier for girls to actually get to the schools or home to visit their families.

Publishers Random House are donating all of the book’s profits to Plan – so please,  buy a copy today (Amazon have it at a substantial discount,  and it’s also currently included in Waterstones “3 for 2″ promotion).  Together, we can make a difference to girls around the world.

Sometimes I read something and it gives me that light bulb moment feeling wherein a number of strands of thought come together in my head, as if at the hands of a skilled weaver who can take amorphous bits of thread and turn them into a beautiful tapestry.

Last Sunday’s Observer magazine had just such a piece, which featured a cover story on model Erin O’Connor visiting a home workers’ collective for women in Delhi and reporting on their ethical clothing workshops, described in the article as an “innovative and revolutionary ethical fashion experiment”.

By cutting out the middlemen, organising the skilled female home workers and dealing directly with UK and US-based retailers, to date the members of SEWA (aka the All India Federation of Self-Employed Women’s Associations) have (my use of bold):

“ … increased our home workers’ wages by nearly 100 per cent and enabled a lot of women to come out of their homes to a SEWA centre to collect their work and meet. Then they engage with other ideas, like microfinance or education for their children.”

So then I was reminded me of my trip to Bangalore last month, when, at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s workshop on mentoring, I found myself paired with a woman from M&S (my first question: “Are you wearing their clothes?” My second: “Can you get their food in India?” The answers were, respectively, YES and NO).

Her name was Jyotsna, which is a Sanskrit name meaning something like “By the light of the new moon” – isn’t that beautiful? She is in charge of supplier compliance for the south east Asia region and we had a fascinating chat about the challenges clothing manufacturers and retailers (she previously worked for GAP) face in countries such as India with regard to child labour – and the economic need for some communities to have all members of a family in paid employment. I’ve heard a bit about M&S’s Plan A campaign from friends who work for them, plus seen the branded marketing in the stores, but it was very real to hear about it from Jyotsna, particularly when we discussed the dilemmas she faces when she visits communities who actively want to have their children at work – a stance which is obviously in direct contravention to the M&S position on child labour.

There’s a quote from Erin O’Connor in the Observer piece which reminds us that when you -

“… see an embroidered top on the high street …. [it’s] … been made by a very determined pair of hands” –

- and the thought that, depending on the source of the garment, perhaps some of that very tiny, delicate embroidery might have been done by a child’s fingers is truly abhorrent.

The article’s reference to creating a greater need for children to be educated as part of generating an awareness of how to break a cycle of poverty and deprivation, also reminded me of this comment from Plan’s 2009 annual report, The State of the World’s Girls:

“Educated girls become educated mothers with increased livelihood prospects; they also have a greater propensity than similarly educated males to invest in children’s schooling.”

More on Plan’s work soon – oh, and my fundraising for their fantastic “Because I Am a Girl” campaign has now pushed past the £300 mark. Many thanks to everyone who’s donated to date and made such a difference. Some of the women mentioned in the Observer article now earn around £40 a month (compared to around a tenner, previously), just to put that £300 in context.

I wonder what it is about the current humanitarian crisis in Haiti that seems to be resonating with children at the moment?  Of course,  the much publicised achievements of seven year old Charlie Simpson (£145,000 at the last count,  including a £5k donation from Mr Moneybags Cowell) are a clear winner,  but the BBC also showed some footage on today’s lunchtime bulletin relating to schoolchildren undertaking fund raising – without in any way referencing why the children are so moved,  which is the aspect which I find fascinating.

Is it the sheer volume of deaths and impacted lives which means that our children are appalled and want to do something to help make a difference?  Is the 24/7 media culture contributing to their awareness?  Has it (thankfully) been a while since there’s been a humanitarian disaster of this magnitude?  Or are we perhaps seeing the emergence of a new generation of globally minded children who have a more keenly developed social conscience?  Perhaps it’s a mixture of all of the above.

Of course,  one of the many reasons as to why Young Master Simpson’s campaign has done so well is because it went viral – he set up an online charity fund raising page, people shared it,  he raised tons of cash,  then the media picked up on it and hey presto – £145k and rising. Excellent!

However,  by way of a low-tech contrast,  here are a couple of photos which I snapped whilst out walking this morning and which triggered my thoughts around children in the context of Haiti.

Eve, Imogen, Olivia and Grace (sisters and a couple of friends) are baking and selling cakes from their front garden this Saturday afternoon – and to raise awareness,  they have made posters and stuck them to trees in the streets near their home.  I don’t know these small girls at all – but I am very touched that they want to make a difference and help, and I’ll be calling in on Saturday afternoon.

Mmm. Cake.

Today is Renuka’s ninth birthday; she is the little girl I sponsor at El Shaddai’s Rainbow House, a residential home for girls in northern Goa, India. I sent Renuka a letter, birthday card and small gift a few weeks ago and it occurred to me this morning that she is likely, I hope, to be having a very different birthday experience this year compared to last year, because this January will be the first of her life in which she has had a permanent home, an education and three meals a day.

Renuka has only been living at Rainbow House since May 2009; prior to that, she and her mother and brother (her father, an alcoholic, left them some years ago, re-married and does not provide for them financially) were living rough in a roadside shack, having arrived in Goa in 2004 as economic migrants from the neighbouring Indian state of Karnataka. An El Shaddai outreach worker met them and encouraged Renuka’s mother to come to one of the charity’s night shelters, which provide a safe place to sleep and a hot meal to those who need it. After a few weeks, Renuka’s mother was offered a cleaning job and accommodation (worth about £40 a month) at a hotel – but there was no room or capacity for Renuka, only her brother (this part of her story really upsets me and makes me think many thoughts as to the feelings of emotional rejection and abandonment that this must have caused in an eight year old child – not to mention how symptomatic it is of gender inequity in India, where sons are valued over and above daughters).

Fortunately, Renuka was offered a place at Rainbow House, El Shaddai’s residential home for 51 girls aged 8 to 13 and now enjoys, in their words: “… love and care along with nourishing food, and a good education”.

Upon arrival, she had only the clothes she was wearing at the time and was issued with her uniform of a school skirt, two Rainbow House polo shirts and some underwear – these remained her only clothing until I visited her six months later and provided her with the dress she’s wearing in the photo and a few other t-shirts – hence the huge grin, I suppose (or perhaps that was at the thought of the chocolate bar!). The girls sleep in dormitories with bunk beds and attend a private school, also run by the charity, in the next village. This is called the “Shanti Niketan”, meaning “Non Formal School” and the classes are organised according to ability rather than age. Stella, the manager of Rainbow House, told me that Renuka wants to be a doctor when she grows up; the scale of this ambition impressed me hugely. I don’t even know if it’s possible in terms of cost and education – but I hope that my sponsorship of Renuka at least makes her feel loved and cared for a little bit.

I visited her about six times when I was in Goa before Christmas and she became a little less shy with me each time. Several of the girls have sponsors and they are fiercely competitive with each other about this. Stella told me that Renuka, as one of the youngest and newest arrivals at the home, had previously felt very left out when other girls received letters, cards, gifts and visits, so she (Stella) was very relieved when I arrived in order to make a fuss of this little girl. Renuka speaks three Indian languages and is learning English, so our interactions were by necessity limited to the bits of English which she did know and an awful lot of hand gestures, plus miming, drawing in the dirt with a stick and improvising. But we played noughts and crosses, drew pictures, looked at photographs and she showed me some of her traditional Indian dance steps, as she is a member of the school’s dancing troupe (I envisage this as being nothing like an Indian dancing version of “Glee” – ahem).  However, I am slowly learning a little Hindi and I hope that a combination of feeling more familiar with each other and our respective increased vocabularies will make our next visits (in February) a bit easier.

Watch this space. I’m also a bit more clued up as to what to take as gifts for both Renuka and the other children; it was much easier to shop for her this time around, as I have a rough idea of her size (far smaller than an English nine year old would be), her likes and dislikes and of the limitations of her home environment. This time, I’m taking her a dress and some underwear from my wonderful mum, who I imagine had great fun choosing Renuka a little cotton dress (we only have nephews/grandsons in our immediate family, so shopping for girls is quite the novelty) and I bought t-shirts from Old Navy when I was in the US before Christmas. Prompted by a game that the children and I played with two balloons representing the Sun and the Earth, where we talked about time differences and different countries (“when it’s dark in India, it’s daytime in England …”) I’ve also bought an inflatable globe as I thought that it might be fun to look at a map of the world and talk about different countries, especially as the El Shaddai sponsors are based all over the world.

Plus of course I had a whale of a time with a very helpful sales assistant in Waterstones, who spent about an hour with me a few weeks ago, helping me pick out suitable books. My criteria was quite defined, which made it harder and hence made me grateful for the continuing High Street presence of a bookstore: written at a suitable level of English, not too many Caucasian images in the illustrations, no mentions of stuff to which she could never relate (which cut out tons of American books, with their mentions of  “sleep-overs” and the like), no branded books like “Hannah Montana” and “High School Musical”, nothing pink and stereotyped … but we got there in the end, so thank you, Rachel in Waterstones, you’re a star. I go back to Goa on 31st January, so I hope to return to Rainbow House in early February – I’m really looking forward to it.

Sponsoring Renuka is one of the most significant things I feel I’ve ever done. It’s only £15 per month but it makes such a difference to Renuka, to children like her and to El Shaddai’s cash flow.

Happy birthday!

15 women (and one man, TLS);

9 bottles of wine;

2  bunches of flowers (received, with thanks!);

48 chocolate brownies – demolished;

1 large leg of lamb;

2 boxes of chocolates (“as it’s chocolate covered fruit,  does it count as one of my Five a Day?”)  - also received with thanks;

1 plate of donated chocolate crispie cakes – diabetic coma? Optional extra;

A lot of laughter!

1 cardigan left behind in error;

Nearly £200 raised for “Because I Am a Girl”, with more still to come;

Bed at 3am.

A lot of washing up the next day … but all very well worthwhile.

Thank you so much, everyone – you’re the best.

So, it’s Wednesday evening, I’ve been cooking for most of the day (other than travelling across London and back for an 8am interview …) and my guests are due to start arriving in 90 minutes’ time.

And we’ve already raised £95 for “Because I Am A Girl” before the first fabulous woman has arrived!

A couple of people have emailed me and asked: “what will you be serving up, Cleo?” – so here’s my menu:

Marinated leg of lamb
Potato & mushroom gratin (v)
Falafels (v)
Tomato salad (v)
Couscous (v)
Cacik (cucumber, yoghurt & mint) (v)
Hummus (v)
Lentil, feta cheese & mint salad (v)

Nigella’s brownies (n)
Almond tart (n)
Fresh strawberries, cream

Cheese board

Coffee, mint tea

I think that’s quite good value for £15 per head, don’t you?

Today I’ve actually had one of those days on my “sabbatical” that I always imagined, when I was working, that I’d have when I wasn’t: I went to the gym and met a friend for coffee this morning, I read a magazine, I had a lovely lunch with my husband … and I then spent the afternoon baking brownies and other goodies in my kitchen.

In the seven weeks since I finished gainful employment, I can count the number of days like today on the fingers of one thumb, so it’s been pleasing to finally achieve the Nirvana of a tranquil and domesticated day. My house smells of chocolate and vanilla and lavender polish; I’ve spent no time at all on either a job hunting website or fiddling with my CV. Instead, I’ve been preparing to host a “Girl’s Night In” event tomorrow night, when around fifteen great women (friends, neighbours, colleagues, contacts) will arrive and join me for dinner, wine and conversation.

But this is no ordinary dinner party: everyone will be making a donation of between £10 and £15 per head. I’m donating the food and wine and every penny raised tomorrow night will be gifted to Plan International’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign, which works to ensure that girls in some of the worlds’ poorest countries (such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and Bangladesh) are able to finish school.

Launched in 2007 by Plan UK, the campaign aims to improve the lives of girls throughout the developing world, many of whom are denied the right to an education, healthcare and a career.

This is a campaign about which I first read an article last month, on the plane on my way to California and I decided there and then, mid-Atlantic, to join in and be part of the solution in my own small, brownie-baking, way.

Here’s a quote from Cherie Blair (and there’s a link to her website on the blogroll on the right, if you’re interested in further details of her work to support women, globally):

“There is plenty of evidence that girls face greater disadvantage and discrimination in many parts of the world. For example, it’s estimated that, globally, 7.4 million more girls than boys don’t get a primary school education, and 70% of those in absolute poverty are female. So it’s good news that Plan has launched its “Because I am a Girl” campaign to draw attention to these abuses and what can be done to overcome them.”

The links that I’ve provided above in the text will take you to the relevant parts of the Plan website and, if you want to learn more, you can download their annual report or take the “Five Friends Challenge” and send e-cards to your friends to encourage them to pledge their support for girls’ rights worldwide.

The link to my fundraising page is here; with your help, we can help millions of girls out of poverty and towards a safer and brighter future.

Thank you.

What an interesting, if exhausting, weekend. I spent it at a venue in central London on an “Introduction to Personal Performance Coaching” course and felt, particularly at the end of the first day, as if I had, to quote me ould Irish granny, been “ridden hard and put away wet.”

(That’s a saying about horses. In case you were wondering).

Unlike, I think, about 98 of the 100 people there, I was pretty sure when I booked the course that I was unlikely to be paying for future coaching courses and so I went in with the mindset that learning more about what coaching is and how I could acquire those skills in order to be a better people manager in my next job would be a really good outcome for me. On Sunday afternoon, we were asked by the trainer if we saw ourselves having either a part-time coaching business (two thirds of the room), a full time business (most of the rest) or just using the skills: me and one other person.

So, what did I learn? Well, first of all, it was good to spend two days with a very nice and amazingly diverse group of people and to hear their stories. A lot of coaching is focussed on listening to the “client” and so, when we were having our “peer coaching” sessions, I, as the “coach” closed my mouth, opened my ears and really, truly, listened. At first, that felt, and here I’ll be brutally honest … extremely hard. But, like any other muscle, you can train it to do your bidding and so I felt that my listening skills were much improved by the end of the two days. We also had to act as “observers” to others when they were, respectively, the “coach” and the “client” and that was a great object lesson in listening, observing but also giving thoughtful and constructive feedback.

As my own life is still in something of a tsunami of thoughts, decisions, options and confusion following on from my redundancy, I found the sessions on goal setting to be really helpful, albeit they did open up quite a can of worms for me when I thought about what I’ve achieved so far and where I hope to be. The trainer-cum-coach, Ann Skidmore , was just fabulous at working with us as a group and helping us to understand so much more about the goal setting process and why people find it so hard.

We also spent time working with Pam Lidford on our beliefs and she explained to us that, when we align goals with our values, success will follow. Pam clarified all of this with a series of great exercises around the concept of moving from a comfort zone to a stretch zone to a panic zone (and back again) and helped us to recognise where we are and how we feel (familiar and cosy – or stressed and unhappy, depending!)

I was also fascinated to learn how those who wanted to set up their own coaching businesses planned to do so and I met several women who hope to, for example, coach and support other women who want to return to the workplace after a career break, or who would like some coaching help in coping with the curve ball that can be new motherhood. Others wanted to break into the corporate/executive coaching and leadership space and we had some interesting debates around the issues facing women in business. And some men and women wanted to do the youth coaching diploma and work with young people; it was wonderfully heartening to see their passion and commitment to making a difference to the lives of the next generation.

The final session was applicable to the 98% but not to the one other bloke and me who didn’t want to set up our own coaching business, as it was all about how to get going, how to get clients, what to charge and so on.

However, on the premise that nothing is ever wasted, I listened in and hence took away the suggestion that using Twitter can be a great way to connect with people and get your message out there. As I’m nothing if not a late adopter … The Gender Blog is now on Twitter and you can see a link to my “tweets” on the right of the screen. Come and find me and join in.

My tweets thus far have been about the “Girls’ Night In” charity event I’m organising for later this week; I’ll be blogging about that tomorrow and there’s also a link to my “Just Giving” page here and on the right under the “Blogroll” section.

Thank you in advance if you feel able to make a donation to support Plan International’s work for girls and women around the world.