September 22, 2004 - Washington DC. PROGENIAL (Programa de Género e Innovación para América Latina) – a program for gender mainstreaming in Latin America has initiated a series of events along the theme of gender in collaboration with the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN). PROGENIAL currently works in Honduras, Panama, Guatemala and Nicaragua through a grant financed by the Dutch Government. The purpose of this series is to initiate an on-going dialogue on gender topics and/or experiences of gender mainstreaming among civil society, government officials, World Bank Task Managers, and project staff in Bank financed operations in Central America.

The first event of the series was held on September 22 addressing “Violence Prevention”. The turn out was high, reaching a total of 98 persons distributed on the following 6 sites: Washington DC, Brazil, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In Washington DC, Andrew Morrison (Senior Economist of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector for LAC) made an excellent and succinct presentation on the magnitude of violence in the LAC region and gave some examples of successful solutions to the problem. Bernice van Bronkhorst (consultant of the Finance, Private Sector and Infrastructure for LAC) followed by giving a highly interesting presentation on community based crime and violence prevention in urban Latin America. (The manual can be found on the web by clicking here)

In the discussions that followed we learned among other things about the NGO Viva Rio’ experience of violence prevention in Brazil, and about Nicaragua’s experience of successfully training the police force in an integrated manner for community based violence prevention. Shelton Davis closed calling for more dialogues on violence and violence prevention pointing out how dialogue is the opposite of violence, since dialogue and communication generate more understanding and create better solutions to the problem.

The series is part of LACPREM Poverty & Gender Knowledge Management Strategy for FY05 and will also include the following: "La incorporación de género en la demanda de servicios de asistencia técnica agropecuaria" (October 20), "Operacionalizando género en proyectos de desarrollo rural financiados por el Banco Mundial en Centroamérica: Tres casos" (November 10) and "Prevención de violencia de género en Latinoamérica: una visión crítica" (Date to be confirmed).

For additional information regarding this activity, please contact Annika Tornqvist at the following address: atornqvist@worldbank.org. To learn about future GDLN activities in Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) related topics, please contact Jorge Gamarra N. at the following e-mail address: jgamarranavarro@worldbank.org