The WWN - SA coordinators group meeting welcomed Lailun Nahar as an ex-officio member of WWN-SA as she has been recently nominated to the Steering Committee of GWP form South Asia.

A proposal from WWN has been submitted to GWA for sanctioning resources for preliminary activities of WWN that have so far been functioning with out any substantial funds. The proposal – as reported by Simi – was meant mainly for the following activities: Regional networking activities, preparation of the country reports and following from that the South Asia report, supporting the program secretariat, and the coordinators meetings. The total amount is a little over USD 80,000. Simi has encouraging response from the GWA and will keep the group informed about the developments in this connection.

Simi mentioned that SASTAC had sent communication to all CWPs that 10% of all the GWP AP funding would be available for gender mainstreaming to be used with the involvement of WWN coordinators for gender objectives

In addition there would an additional USD 30,000 available out of SASTAC savings for WWN activities.

One of the main objectives of WWN would also be to ensure that there is a 50% representation in all GWP bodies.

There was a discussion of the problem some of the WWN coordinators were facing in their interaction with SASTAC. Reference was made to the recent email of Dr. Chitale, outgoing chairperson of SASTAC, to Simi regarding Jasveen and Kusum – who are the nominated WWN coordinators by their respective CWPs. The derogatory references to both the women were strongly objected to and It was decided that Simi – as the WWN coordinator for SA – would take up the matter with Dr. Chitale and ensure that a public/written response is received from him that rectifies the damaging and baseless statements made by him in the letter and sent widely across to some of the other GWP/SASTAC members. Since this was an official letter – the response should be officially received.