Women's Cross-Cultural Learning Exchange Programme

Editorial

In April 1983. 12 women from sending groups in eight countries (Brazil. Hong Kong. India. Israel. Kenya. Mauritius. the Philippines and Switzerland) participated in this  Programme. These women are working and organising in different areas of concern to women : rape crisis centers, alternative agricultural programmes, women's health clinics, women's publications and information centers.

This was the beginning of the Women's Cross-Cultural Learning Exchange Programme, launched to meet the widely expressed need to extend our networking further, by making it possible for women activists to have more direct contact with each other. Under this Programme, selected women activists could go to work for a time with a women's group in other countries doing similar work.

First the 12 participants came to Geneva for a two-week "Orientation Course" — to meet each other, exchange ideas, and prepare for their "exchange and learning experience", when they spent three months working with a women's group (receiving group) in a totally different culture from their own.

There were nine receiving groups in all, in Costa Rica, India, Israel. Italy. Mauritius. Switzerland and USA. In some cases two participants went to the same organisation. The resulting learning and exchange which took place was indeed remarkable, and this is why we wanted to share this with you through the ISIS Women's International Bulletin.

It is, of course, impossible to capture everything that happened at the Orientation Course, or each individual woman's total and complex experience, and what she learned. We conceived this Bulletin as a kind of "flash" — giving you glimpses of the whole. Each woman is presented through a combination of extracts from her presentation at the Orientation Course, and parts of their reports from the exchange experience. The variety and uneveness of the texts, then, reflects not only the different experiences and characters of the individual women, but also our own editing. If you wish to know more, for instance, about any of the sending or receiving group.s, we urge you to write to them directly for information. A complete list of addresses can be found on page 11.

Finally, we see this Programme as just the beginning. You will see from our evaluation that the success of the Programme demands that we not only continue it, but give it more importance. Full details of the 1984 Programme are given on the coloured insert in the front.

We hope you will find this Bulletin as inspiring as the experience of the Programme was for us and the participants. We hope. too. that you will join the Isis-WICCE network in 1984. And don't forget to renew your support to the ISIS Women's International Bulletin, which will now be known as the Isis Women's International Journal. Happy New Year !