Advisory Board Meeting: On March 1, 2018, many members of the CPC Learning Network's Advisory Board Members came together at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where the CPC's Secretariat is housed. The goals of the meeting were to brainstorm the CPC Learning Network's strategic priorities in research, training, and networking for the coming three years and to propose new ways of working to reach these goals. Through dynamic discussions and group work over the course of the day, the CPC Learning Network Advisory Board members and Secretariat surely met these goals. 

In the coming months, the CPC Learning Network will begin to build out the new strategic plan, beginning with the seeds that were planted during the Advisory Board Meeting. Thank you to all of our incredible Advisory Board members!

Read more about the CPC Learning Network's Advisory Board here.

This recent article published by CPC Learning Network faculty affiliate Ben Cislaghi in the Journal of Development in Practice offers a qualitative investigation of how human rights education sessions, embedded in a multi-faceted intervention, helped members of a rural community in West Africa challenge inequitable gender norms that hindered women's political participation. Results show a change in women's political participation and community members' descriptions of women's potential. Three features of the intervention contributed to this change: (1) its pedagogical approach; (2) its substantive content; and (3) the engagement of men and women together. The article calls for interventions that facilitate sustained dialogue between men and women to achieve greater gender equity.

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here. 

Violence against women and girls is a global concern, and particularly salient in humanitarian settings. Successful efforts to prevent gender-based violence in humanitarian settings must address a wide range of issues, from discriminatory laws to explicit community support for violence, and yet, at the core of these efforts is reducing oppressive gender and social norms. Director of the CPC Learning Network Lindsay Stark, CPC faculty affiliate Marni Sommer, and colleagues from the Mailman School of Public Health and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) recently published an article in Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal on their study which examined local attitudes towards and social norms around responding to physical and sexual abuse of girls in villages in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo and among Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopian camps. The findings suggest how communities use violence as a tool to enforce the importance of girls practicing community-defined "good" adolescent girl behavior, and have implications for gender-based violence programming among other conflict-affected populations. This study is a part of the IRC's COMPASS program: Creating Opportunities through Mentoring, Parental Involvement and Safe Spaces.

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here. 

CPC Learning Network co-director Mark Canavera and CPC faculty affiliate Bree Akesson recently published an article in the European Journal of Social Work that presents research exploring the conceptualization and practice of supervision during social worker training in Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, Francophone West African countries whose social work education frameworks and processes are nearly absent in the academic literature. Drawing upon discursive analyses of training curricula as well as interviews and group discussions undertaken in 2014 with professors, administrators, and students, this study notes the centrality of fieldwork to training and heavy reliance upon faculty-field liaisons in both countries. Conceptually, supervision policy in these contexts emphasizes compliance: systematized visits by institute administrators to fieldwork sites (in Burkina Faso), regimented simulation exercises, and formal performance evaluations to gauge student progress. In practice, however, respondents were likely to highlight the importance of modelling and coaching, indicating the hybridization of 'harder' regulatory supervision with 'softer' mentoring approaches. This study contributes to global learning about the role of supervision in social work training by analyzing its theory and practice in two understudied countries, highlighting the emergence of new norms of practice within outmoded regulatory frameworks. The research shines light upon the creative ways that social work administrators are improving supervision of social work students' fieldwork in low-income countries with limited public resources. 

Read the article here, or contact the corresponding author here. Access a limited number of free e-prints of this article here.

A new version of the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) Protection Mainstreaming Mobile Application (ProM) is now available for download on the Google Play and iTunes App Stores. The Protection Mainstreaming App is based on the Global Protection Cluster guidance available online and provides a solution to streamline protection mainstreaming guidance to organizations' specific needs. It provides specific actions that can improve adherence to key principles of meaningful access, safety, dignity, participation, and accountability in humanitarian action. Protection mainstreaming actions are organized by program sectors, protection principles, or project cycle stages. A new section on the app allows you to access a list of context-specific resources available for your country of intervention (i.e. assessment, tools, training opportunities). This mobile app can be used by any humanitarian actor, but is especially helpful for individuals responsible for project design, implementation, or monitoring and evaluation. It is available in English, French, and Arabic. 

Read more about the ProM here.