Quality Assurance Framework (QAF)
FLOWER POWER
The guidebook for best practice of Women's Community Education(WCE) is finally ready!
This guidebook tells you step-by-step how to use a framework for WCE, called the Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) to review all of the work and activities of your organisation or group as you work together to provide education for women and struggle for women's equality. It is a tool that helps you to figure out if you are carrying out 'best practice' WCE.Click here to have a look!
Women's group campaigning
Longford women's Link is a core group of the Quality assurance framework project and a long term AONTAS member. Take a look at their new initiative for campaigning in their local area:
Longford Women's Link Manifesto
Summary:
This paper outlines the background to the Longford Women's Manifesto Project, and proposals for a new structure to facilitate women's democratic participation in Co. Longford. The project is based on Longford County Council's expressed values of democratic renewal, and consultation and partnership with all stakeholders in the community. Despite commitments to increase the number of women in decision-making bodies, relatively few women are involved in local decision-making. When women's voices and perspectives are not heard, the whole community loses out. The paper outlines Longford Women's Link's active citizenship programme for women throughout the county, and women's search for solutions to address this democratic deficit. It presents a proposal for a new structure developed by the Longford Women's Manifesto Strategy Group based on feedback from grassroots women.
Consultation Day-Women's Community Education May 27th 2009.
Camden Court Hotel, Camden St. Dublin 2
AGENDA
10. 30- 11.00 am- Registration/ Tea/ Coffee
11.00 am Welcome and Introduction to the Day- Berni Brady, Director , AONTAS
11.15 am- Where are we now in terms of QAF- Natasha Bailey, Project Consultant
11.30 am- Discussion groups.
The discussion groups will be facilitated to focus on what is currently happening at different levels within Women's Community Education i.e.
- Organisational level
- Worker level
- Learner/participant level
They will also provide a space for groups to identify their priorities and offer solutions for moving forward in the current context.
12.50 pm- Feedback
1.20 pm- Moving forward from an AONTAS perspective- Berni Brady, Director AONTAS
1.30 pm- Close and lunch
Please note- This is a very important meeting as it will inform our decisions on how best to support our WCE groups in the current critical situation. Your participation is vital to our future plans. AONTAS will support two members of your group to attend the meeting by covering public transport travel and subsistence where necessary. If more than two members wish to attend please contact the office. In order to help us plan the day, please respond by May 21st at the latest. Responses can be emailed, telephoned or posted to Eleonora Peruffo, Administrator: eperuffo@aontas.com.
ATTENTION ALL WOMEN'S GROUPS
DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: DUBLIN, MAY 27th 2009
As you are aware, from April 2007 until November 2008, AONTAS delivered training to a number of its member groups in mainstreaming the Quality Assurance Framework for Women's Community Education with the support of funding from the Department of Education and Science. This training built on the achievements of a pilot project carried out between 2003 and 2005 involving over 100 women in the development of the Framework. During the last two years 95 women from 16 WCE organisations around the country worked together to quality assure the work of 11 groups. These groups were awarded their quality assurance certificate by Minister Sean Haughey in November 2008. An important outcome of this phase of the work is the development of a Framework guidebook which is currently in production and due for publication in June.
We are acutely aware that our WCE groups have been adversely affected by structural and funding changes in the past couple of years, making participation in activities outside of direct provision difficult. AONTAS has a strong track record of support for its women's groups since the early nineties, and hopes to continue to support you in whatever way is affordable and appropriate over the last phase of our current strategic plan which will bring us to the end of 2010. But we need you to help us with this. We need to plan a way forward for the next 18 months and you need to talk to us about what that plan might look like.
We are therefore inviting all of you to participate in a consultation seminar on May 27th in Dublin. AONTAS will finance this meeting and support two people from each group to attend. We need to hear from many of you as possible and we would urge you to participate. We cannot move forward without your co-operation. The meeting will run throughout the morning and finish with lunch. Details of the venue etc. will be posted after Easter. We look forward to seeing you on 27th.
Quality Assurance Framework-20th November 2008
The groups who went through the QAF process in 2008 gathered on November 20th at the Royal Dublin hotel. The groups who successfully completed the process and who are now able to quality assure their work are:
- Clare Women's Network- Clare
- Limerick Women's Network-Limerick
- Longford Women's Link-Longford
- Ronanstown Women's Group/CDP- Dublin
- South West Kerry Women's Association- Co. Kerry
- Southside Women's Action Network (S.W.A.N.)- Dublin
- St Munchin's Women's group - Kileely
- SOLAS-Ballymun-Dublin
- Southside Women's group- Limerick
- Waterford Women's Centre-Waterford
- Women of the North West- Mayo
The groups received a QAF certificate from the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Sean Haughey TD.
The outcome of the mainstreaming phase 2008 is a brand new guidebook which was presented on the day. The guidebook is a very useful tool both for groups who are there and want to stay in the arena as well as for groups who are new and are just about to start.The guidebook tell groups step-by-step how to use the WCE Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) to evaluate all of the work and activities of their organisation or group as they work together to provide education for women and struggle for women's equality. It is a tool to help you develop and improve your whole organisation, not just the programmes or courses that they might run. It will be ready and available for groups to use in early 2009.
The day was also a chance for the groups to get together and share experiencew and thoughts on the QAF process.
Would you like to see the photos? go to our Photo Gallery!
Read about groups' experiences!
From Crosscare Newsletter:
LONGFORD Women's LINK group(from their press release)
Tess Murphy, Director of Longford Women's Link, a QAF as well as FETAC Quality Assured education and training centre for women and one of the groups involved in the QAF process, explains: 'Women's Community Education is an approach to adult education based on the recognition that women have unequal access to choices, to resources and to influence. Women's Community Education challenges these inequalities. It is a community-led approach to education that seeks to achieve social as well as individual change, and that is where it really differs from mainstream education. The Minister Sean Haughey TD confirmed that Women's Community Education is a key contributor to social justice and gender equality.'
She continues: 'This Framework provides a standard, a national benchmark by which women's groups such as ourselves can quality assure our work, and check that we really are keeping to the vision, principles and practices of Women's Community Education. The Framework offers a step-by-step guide in carrying out this challenging self-evaluation.'
Presenting certificates to each group, Minister Haughey commended the work of Women's Community Education groups and encouraged them to persevere. 'Through their outreach work and the creation of enabling learning environments, these groups encourage and support the participation of women in learning at a wide range of levels. Through education at local and community level, it is possible to achieve real, positive change - change that will benefit and advance our economy, our society and most importantly, our people.' However, Bernie Brady cautioned, 'We are now hearing many comparisons with the situation in the 1980's. During that time the adult and community education sector experienced huge cutbacks in funding and we are still picking up the pieces.'
AONTAS Director, Ms Brady, urged the Minister not to react to the economic downturn by cutting funding to the community education sector. 'I would encourage the Government to keep up the momentum. It is by investing in inititiatives such as the Women's Community Education Quality Assurance Framework now, that we will build our future' she concluded.
Tess Murphy agrees whole-heartedly. 'If years of hard work in community development by women's groups all over Ireland is not to be undone, then sustained support for this vulnerable sector is essential.'
Celebrating Women's Community Education: The Women's Community Education Quality Assurance Framework Mainstreaming Project
The Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) Mainstreaming
Project started in spring 2007.
QAF mainstreaming project is the follow on from a pilot project which ran from 2003-2005 involving 5 groups.
The Mainstream Phase involved Leaders attending six two-day workshops from September 2007 to June 2008. Every time Leaders came to a training workshop where they prepared to go back and facilitate one quality assurance workshop with a quality assurance working group convened by management in their organizations . The quality assurance happens over six stages or six workshops and culminates in a quality assurance plan in which groups identify how they will address gaps in practice in their work that they have identified throughout the process.
The objectives of the project are to:
- Train 60 leaders (two from 30 affiliate groups) to lead their groups through the quality assurance process and support those leaders as they help their groups to apply the framework;
- Ensure that the QAF becomes a self-directed process by writing and publishing a "facilitator's guide" that groups can use by themselves to quality assure their work without support;
- Establish clear connections between FETAC and HETAC and the QAF;
- Constitute an independent women's community education quality assurance support structure that can award a quality stamp to those groups who have gone through the quality assurance programme, and
- Identify and establish a sustainable funding programme for women's community education in Ireland.
As some Leaders from the second Dublin training workshop reported, participating in the process had facilitated members of their organizations to develop, "A shared awareness about the work and a sense of belonging together as an organization [as well as] renewed energy and confidence in our work."
Click here to download a copy of the Quality Assurance Framework.
