SI UN Representative, Bette Levy, blogs about the the importance of partnerships at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF).

“HLPF 2022 is actually a blur for me due to my coming down with Covid right at the beginning. However, just prior to coming down with Covid I was honored to represent the Women’s Major Group as a speaker at a UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Learning, Training & Practice (LTP) session on 7 July 2022.

The process for these LTP sessions is quite unique as individual organisations submit separately a proposal to host one of the sessions on a topic they feel they could add value to attendees … for the WMG it was clear that the monthly meeting training sessions about how to advocate within the UN would be helpful to others. We wrote up the proposal and were pleased to hear we were accepted to present our program but there was a hitch in that we would not be presenting alone for the 1 ½ hours but rather we would be presenting with 3 other groups (UN Women, Women at the Table, and the Center for Migration & Justice) and everyone would only have 15 minutes. Our partners were seemingly unrelated other than all working on women’s causes but it was up to us to make it work. The focus of the other 3 partners was data in various perspectives, presenting reports or sharing tools but the Women’s Major Group (WMG) was about grassroots advocacy … How could this work?

Women when determined always find a way and that we did … by talking together and pointing out what was key for each of us to address we came together to create a flow that truly worked. Our audience would never know that we had not chosen to work together but rather were put together. In fact, the program ran very smoothly and through our prep calls we were able to truly merge our presentations and were able to work well together including in the Q&A.

As a group we were able to point out the importance of data regardless of what you are doing, the need to share that data with partners and figure out why and how it makes a difference. Because the focus was on data the WMG was able to point out the need for not just quantitative data but the importance of qualitative data especially if you wish to reach people at the grassroots.

My WMG colleague and I were still able to make our key points about advocacy at the local, national & regional level and I was able to spotlight the Philippines SI Makati Club’s “Adopt a National Police Women’s Desk” project from our 2022 HLPF Para 89 report since the Philippines was a 2022 VNR country. By highlighting this project I was able to show the connection to our partners and data as well as how at the grassroots people can turn a Presidential decree into a successful functioning arm of the police. This was not overnight and first required research, data collection, interviews and of course financing (fundraising) over a two year period before it could be implemented but the success is still evident and functioning 28 years later.

For me the take away was to reinforce the relevance of building into all our projects data collection. The value of working with others that you might not have even known about. By doing that, it gives us the ability to communicate with other groups, entities that might not know us or think we are at their level but having the ability to look beyond just doing good for others makes us a worthy partner.”