During February 22-24 2010, in New Delhi, India, Social Watch held the Pan Asia Social Watch capacity-building workshop. The aim of this workshop was to strengthen the technical capacities of national Social Watch coalitions in Asia and in the analysis and monitoring of public policy, as well as to forge links between the different member organizations of Social Watch in Asia as well as to construct, at the regional level, a common advocacy and campaigning agenda for Social Watch.
Later, in March 24-26 2010 the new Coordinating Committee of Social Watch –elected last year during the 4th Social Watch General Assembly– met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The meeting was organized by SODNET (Kenya) in partnership with SAHRiNGON-Tanzania Chapter, with assistance from the Secretariat during the planning process. The main objectives of this CC meeting were to review the decisions of the Assembly, to define the strategies to implement the Assembly decisions, to overview the activities performed by the Secretariat and to implement the policies and activities of the CC in the next two years (till the next Assembly to be held in the Philippines in 2011).
The CC Members that participated were: Mirjam van Reisen (Brussels), Yasmin Ismail (Egypt), Norayda Ponce (Guatemala), Himanshu Jha (India), Edward Oyugi (Kenya), Marivic Raquiza (Philippines), Barbara Adams (New York), Tanya Dawkins (USA) and Emily Sikazwe (Zambia). Martina Kabisama (Tanzania) participated as observer. From the Secretariat Roberto Bissio and Ana Claudia Zeballos were present. The meeting was chaired by Tanya Dawkins (USA) and Emily Sikazwe (Zambia).
Meet the CC co-chairs.
Mrs. Emily Joy Sikazwe (Zambia) from Social Watch Zambia, has been the Executive Director of Women for Change for 16 years and a CC member since the Sophia Assembly in 2006. She holds an MSc degree in Agronomy and an MA in adult education. She works with a network of rural poor devoted to gender, human rights, democracy and development that covers more than 300,000 rural women and men in the country, as well as traditional leaders in 10 Southern African countries. She is a trainer and social mobiliser for social justice. She is mother of many but has two biological children – a girl of 21 and a boy aged 19.
Mrs. Tanya Dawkins (USA) is the executive director of the Global-Local Links Project based in the USA. Her work focuses on engaging the question of what it means to build citizen and community power in an age of intensifying economic, financial and other globalization(s). She is dedicated to developing a new generation of globally minded, community-centric tools, policies, networks and metrics that put people and communities at the center of the global economy. Also, she is currently developing the Global Center for Community Rights, Leadership and Policy Innovation. She has been a member of Social Watch USA since 2005 and became its convenor in 2009. Tanya has participated in a variety of Social Watch activities and joined the Coordinating Committee in September 2009.