Gender and Social Inclusion in Proposal Processes: Promo Video Transcript

Posted 22 September 2022

Video link: https://vimeo.com/751724781

LINDSEY: Hi everyone, I'm Lindsey Jones-Renaud, founder of the Cynara Gender Training Platform. I'm here with Emily B. Brown talking about her upcoming training: GESI Integration for business development.

I'll post the dates of the training in a box on the screen.

Hi, Emily, tell us about yourself. 

EMILY: Hi, Lindsey. Thanks for the introduction. My name is Emily B. Brown, I am an independent consultant in gender equality and social inclusion, or GESI for short. I have been working in that specialist field for 13 years and in business development for the past six years, including many opportunities with some prominent international NGOs and non-profits in business development. 

LINDSEY: What makes your training unique? 

EMILY: I’m going to lead with something that isn’t so unique. Business development professionals will tell you that two of the most important components in business development are planning and strategy. Yet what we find in a lot of global development organizations is that when rubber meets the road and a bid is released, many organizations scramble to be able to meaningfully integrate GESI in the final product and that’s because they lack the established processes and tools to help them plan and strategize at each stage of the business development lifecycle to ensure that GESI integration is accounted for in that final product. 

So to address that gap, this training will equip participants to identify what I’m calling GESI integration gateways throughout their own organizations’ business development lifecycles – what I mean by gateways - those are places where GESI integration components should be taking place at each stage of the business development life cycle, from positioning all the way to post submission. The GESI Integration in Business Development training will introduce tools and resources to make that work easier at each phase of the lifecycle. Some of those tools will include applying gender equality markers; which are like scoring guides for proposals, gender analysis tools which can help inform the desk research and the logic model, and also minimum standards for GESI integration in programming, as well as a deeper understanding of gender transformative approaches in programming to help us with the project design. Lastly, we’ll focus primarily on bi-lateral donors and that’s going to be decided based on participant feedback in the pre-training survey, so it will be a bit tailored depending on who joins us for this training. 

LINDSEY: Awesome. I love your concept of the gateways. I think that's brilliant because you're right. With the proposals that I worked on it is such a mad scramble and your approach is just, very strategic and helps people prioritize. And that's so important. 

So tell us about who should sign up for this training?

EMILY: For my training GESI Integration in Business Development, it is certainly helpful to have a background in business development, but it isn’t required to be able to come away with the knowledge to be able to integrate GESI across the business development life cycle. I would highly recommend two professional cohorts to look into the training to deepen their skills in either GESI integration or also in business development. Those two cohorts are GESI specialists who might want to expand or refine their skills in business development - this training will provide them with tangible tools and strategies to fulfill those goals. On the other hand, Business development professionals should look into this training if they want to expand their exposure to GESI. They don’t need to know deeply GESI frameworks or have a deep understanding of GESI, because this training really doesn’t require that for the takeaways on GESI integration to be effective in practice.

LINDSEY: So both the GESI and Gender specialists and the Business Development folks.

EMILY: Yes, thanks for summarizing 

LINDSEY: Great. Is there anything else you'd like to add, Emily? Anything else people should know? 

EMILY: I just wanted to say that I’m thrilled to offer this training - what you just said about standardizing these opportunities for GESI integration - it can help in any organization. So I’m excited to be bringing more of those strategies for business development to the Cynara Gender Training Platform and I look forward to seeing some of you in the near future! Thank you.

LINDSEY:  great thank you so much Emily. Everyone, we will post the date to the training and a link to sign up in a box on the screen, and we look forward to having you sign up. Thank you so much.