The Gender Festival is an open forum for likeminded individuals and organisations to come together to share experiences and knowledge, to celebrate achievements and assess challenges ahead, to strengthen networking and coalition-building, to build capacity and to contribute to public debate and plan collectively for social change from a feminist perspective. The first Gender Festival was organised in 1996; since then TGNP Mtandao, FemAct and their grassroots partners have successfully organised a series of 13 Festivals based on a variety of themes, reflecting the burning issues of the day. TGNP has also succeeded in organising mini Gender Festivals in 2014 at Tarime and in 2016 at Mkambarani Ward in Morogoro Region.

The Festival provides a unique space for activists from all walks of life to come together from every region of Tanzania, including Pemba and Zanzibar, as well as from neighbouring countries of Africa and beyond.

Sub Themes:

• Beyond numbers: Claiming and transforming leadership spaces for women and marginalized people.
• Social exclusion: Women and economic empowerment.
• Ending the Silence: Documenting ‘Her’ Story in capturing our achievements (Women success stories)
• Economic marginalization: How do we finance gender equality?

The Gender Festival 2017 is coordinated by TGNP Mtandao working together with other partners, including the Feminist Activist Coalition (FemAct), grassroots activist participants in the weekly Gender and Development Series (GDSS), Knowledge Centre members and the many grassroots activist groups who are active partners in transformative movement building processes in several districts of Tanzania.

The Festival Features
The festival is a collective space for sharing skills, experiences and Capacity. It features the following: