How to be a Gender Trainer: Promo Video Transcript

Posted September 29, 2022

Video link:

LINDSEY: Hi, everyone! I am Lindsey Jones-Renaud, founder of the Cynara Gender Training Platform. I am here with Lucy Ferguson talking about her upcoming training: How to be a Gender Trainer. It's taking place October 3-7. This is the third time she's doing this training.

The first was in February 2022, and the second was in April 2022. And I'll post the dates of the training in a box on the screen. Lucy, Welcome! 

LUCY: Thank you. 

LINDSEY: So how will your training help people to improve their training practice? 

LUCY: It was very interesting to me when I first started asking my participants what it was that they wanted to get out of the training, and almost everyone in both the first and the second training said they wanted to improve their confidence. So what I found over the last 2 [trainings] is that the people who are attending this training, they know their stuff, in general. They know their job, they know their work and they're sort of lacking the confidence to call themselves a trainer, or to really take that step forward and say “Yes, I can run this training.” Or that “I'd like to take responsibility for designing and delivering this training.” So a lot of it is really working on that in a very practical way, supporting the participants to build their confidence as trainers.

We do this by lots of practical experience based on their own knowledge. So everyone works from their own knowledge, from their own specialist area, whether that be, violence, or health or education or whatever area the participants are working in, it comes from their own interest and knowledge. And we really build, over the week, a very supportive environment, this strong peer network where we have an agreement that it’s okay to fail, that this is practice and anything can be tried out in this space.

So it's about allowing people to play around with some of the things maybe they haven't dared do yet, or they're not super confident about doing in practice but they know what it is that they want to do. And then we just work together to give supportive critical feedback to each and every one of us. So at the end we all come out learning a lot about ourselves and about our training practice and each other as well. 

LINDSEY: That's great and so important. There are lots of resources out there for gender training, but reading about it and then actually doing it is something completely different. 

One of the other great things about your training is that you're also teaching folks to learn more about the gender training as a field. So can you tell us more about that? What will they learn about gender training as a field?

LUCY: Yes, I want them to feel that, when they come out of it, they feel like they're a part of now the gender training field. There are quite a lot of debates, some of which have been going on for a long time, and some of which are newer, and I kind of interspersed the training with - then we're doing very practical activities - with us having more conceptual theoretical conversations about how, you know, how this plays out really in the broader field. So some of the things are about - some of the current debates are around standards. So, for example, there are no formal standards. It's not really recognized as an industry or a profession. So there are various different kinds of courses you can take or certificates but there isn't one acknowledged form of standards. That's always a very interesting discussion, you know; who builds those standards, what would we consider to be quality standards? So we talk a bit about that.

Of course, a really really important topic is now what happens to training after the pandemic. We've done 3 years of online training and we'll discuss a lot between what are the - not necessarily the advantages and disadvantages, but always trying to work out when is it time to use online training and when does something need to be in person? And strategically as well, we're going to need to justify more and more to those who are contracting us to run trainings, why something needs to be in person or why it should be online. So we need to really think that through in a more strategic way and that hasn't really been done yet.

So we do a lot of thinking together about these kinds of contemporary debates. And then probably the most important one is the idea of transformative versus transactional training. And how to deal with when someone just wants us to do half a day, or when you’re asked can you just do as a training on transformative change for gender equality but we just want a checklist. So it's how do you work strategically to sort of meet the challenges of the demands for everything to be done quickly and easily, whilst at the same time they want transformative change. So we play around with those kinds of ideas. What kind of arguments can you use, how to stay strong? And we also have very practical conversations about pricing, negotiating, how long do things really take, budgeting for your proposals. And we also acknowledge that some people are working as external trainers, and other people are working as internal trainers. But even in house trainers still need to budget the right amount of time for a piece of work.

LINDSEY: That's great. Navigating those dynamics is in some ways its own form of expertise. So that's so important. And finally, what will they take away from the training?

LUCY: Well, I'm really pleased to say that the last 2 cohorts - the one from February and the one from April - I've had a follow up session around 6 months after each of them. Almost everyone attended the session who had attended the week's training. They had so much to share in terms of what they've done, how they felt, what confidence they'd still like to build. Both of the groups have their own WhatsApp group which they use to send ideas and questions, and in the last one they asked whether it would be possible to have a sort of peer mentoring network, something that we could do twice a year, perhaps, on an online basis. So actually we're sort of starting to build this team of alumni from the 2 courses so far and I would invite those who are going to attend the third course to also be a part of this because it's really nice to be with people who you've shared this experience with, but also with those who did the other trainings, but nevertheless are facing some of the same challenges. So it's really nice that those sessions you can just come and say “Okay, I need to deliver a session on this, and I don't feel comfortable. Can I try it out?” That's exactly the kind of space that we're offering here. A very open, non-judgmental place to make mistakes, so that when you go and do it, it's less intimidating and hopefully more effective. 

LINDSEY: Someone who's taken one of your courses will be teaching their first training on the Cynara Gender Training Platform, Emily B. Brown. So that's really exciting. 

Well, great! Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share, Lucy?

LUCY: Just to say that if you're interested, please feel free to reach out to me or to Lindsey with any questions. And just to say that I feel very grateful for the opportunity to do this course, because I learn so much from the participants and it's really kind of one of those wonderful feelings at the end of the week where everyone's exhausted but it's the good kind of exhausted because we've given each other so much attention and care and really built a strong community for going forward for the future. So I'm really looking forward to the next training and the one after that, hopefully. 

LINDSEY: Great. Thank you so much. So again, this is How to be a Gender Trainer with Lucy Ferguson, October 3rd - 7th. We'll post the dates and the link to sign up, and we look forward to seeing some of you all there.