Working Meeting Report | Curriculum Strengthening Working Group

Report of the First Curriculum Working Group Meeting
Focus on Sexuality Culture and Identity

Click here for the overview of the Project Context, Methodology of the Curriculum Working Meetings and the Objectives of the Working Group Meetings

Sunday 25th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Reconnection with overall programme goals and process
· Clarification of workshop objectives and programme
· Introductions

4.1 Welcome
Co-hosts Takiywaa Manuh and Amina Mama warmly welcomed participants to Accra and to the working group meeting.

4.2 Exercise: Introductions
Each of the participants was asked to introduce themselves by reflecting on the personal and political events that led to their attendance at the meeting. Participants shared their individual, experientially rich and diverse paths to GWS teaching and research. Each narrative was informed by encounters with women's marginalisation and oppression Common themes included the influence of parents and upbringing; influence of education and travel; personal growth and development; the effects of political and historical developments on the continent; increased awareness of sexuality and gender issues through personal experiences of pregnancy, motherhood, rape, abortion, violence against women, relationships with men, single parenthood, divorce, marriage, homosexuality and lesbianism. Participants stressed the importance of good role models (both women and men), as well as the impact of their involvement in politics, feminist activism and resistance.

4.3 Programme And Objectives
The programme and objectives for the workshop were shared (see Appendix 2).

Participants were asked to reflect on the following questions: What do we teach? Where do we teach? How do we teach?

Monday 26th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Share and review feminist pedagogic perspectives
· Locate sexuality, culture and identity as strategic area in strengthening GWS teaching

4.4 Reviewing Feminist Pedagogic Perspectives
Working group members were asked to think about what it means to learn. The facilitator noted that participants entered the space of authority in the classroom, through a long experience of being taught. She invited participants to access that experience through the creation of a short story about learning. This story, entitled the 'Education of Aluta' was created in the group, with each participant contributing a few sentences.

Exercise: The Education Of Aluta
Aluta woke up. She had a headache. She couldn't do anything about it because she had to prepare breakfast for the family before she went to school. Yet again she was being unfair to herself. She decided she would lie down and read her novel. But her mother wouldn't have it. Her mother shouted: "Aluta, get up!" Secretly Aluta wishes she could stay in bed all day and read her book instead of being interrupted and having to go and cook. Her mother doubted her headache. How could anyone with a headache want to read? Aluta's friend, Alessi, came by every morning. "Aren't you coming to school today, Aluta?" Alessi called. Aluta's headache lifted miraculously and she darted through the door, her mother's voice trailing down the dusty path: "Aluta, are you leaving me to do all this work?" Aluta felt guilty. It was that same feeling of guilt that struck Aluta as she stood in front of the professor's desk twelve years later, one hand holding a note trying to explain why her assignment was late, the other hand holding a letter from her mother which spoke of her mothers tiredness, yet in the very same sentence in which it also spoke of her pride in Aluta. Aluta reflected on her past and thought about the struggle she waged to get to where she was. She decided she had to take time for herself in order to deal with the conflicting emotions she experienced. She had to come to some closure and move on with her future. But her immediate problem was to get the professor to accept her work. She had brought it in late and he was being difficult. "To hell with you, I will get the assignment done and get through this course come what may," Aluta thought . That evening sitting at the pub with her male friend Jose, Aluta felt relaxed. Here she was in a space with someone she cared about, someone who allowed her to be all that she wanted to be. The next day she spoke to Alessi about how to get the professor to accept her late assignment. "Well, there are ways to get round it," Alessi said. Aluta stared at her: "How?" "You could allow him to touch your body. He is fond of that; you must just pretend to enjoy it. If you do that you will get him to accept your assignment." Aluta failed that module. She decided that she couldn't choose that option; her education was so much more than a sacrificing of her integrity. She wished that she had more lecturers like Professor Dayton who taught English. She was the only female in the department and she lectured in a way that made things real and relevant to students' life experience. Aluta thought if she talked to Prof Dayton she might find a way of dealing with the challenges she was facing. In the following weeks Aluta discovered that she was pregnant with Jose's baby. As she counted the months, she realised the baby would be due at the time of her final exams. Jose didn't want an abortion. She was getting increasingly desperate. Whilst visiting her mother's village an elderly aunt confronted Aluta with the scandal. "You modern girls enter into trouble and don't know how to deal with it!" She was taken to a neighbouring village midwife who mixed a herbal concoction, which Aluta drank. She lost the child. As she returned to the city, she wondered what she would tell Jose. She wondered whether the baby was a girl or a boy.

4.5 Principles and Practices of Feminist Pedagogy
The story highlighted issues concerning learning and showed that dominant learnings take place in attenuated and contested zones. Aluta learns by discussing her problems with friends and mentors; she reflects on the obstacles she encounters in order to negotiate a path through them. Learning takes place in formal and informal spaces and is not always an incremental process, there are zigzags and slippages, and one learns through rebellion and resistance.

In pairs, participants were asked to address the following questions: If you were in a classroom and someone wanted to guarantee that you did not learn in that space, what would they have to do to preclude your learning?

What inhibits or prevents learning?
· A government-imposed curriculum
· Authoritarianism, intimidation and insulting behaviour by people in authority, teachers or fellow students
· Sexist attitudes and gender discrimination
· Teaching methods that are dull and uninspiring, e.g., rote learning
· Peer pressure
· Language barriers.

How do we learn?
· By thinking through possibilities and choices and making decisions
· Through reflection on our own and others' experience
· Through interaction and discussion with friends and peers, as well as teachers and mentors
· Learning takes place primarily in informal spaces, rather than through formal education, and this must be borne in mind by teachers
· Learning always happens, whether intentionally or not, whether structured and formal or otherwise. Resistance and defiance thus also lead to learning.

What encourages and nourishes learning?
· Respect towards students and learners in class
· Patience and listening skills
· Integrity - practising what is preached
· Seeking ways of engaging the class through:
o Humour
o Anecdotes
o Personal experiences
o Positive learning
o Examples from real life
o Connecting activism with what is taught in class
o Learning names
o Participation
o Allowing room for questions and comments
· Owning your authority as a teacher and being willing to be challenged by students
· Interactive learning - recognising students as people who have a life outside the classroom and identifying connections between what they learn in school and what they can learn from their life situations and experiences
· Knowing how students are positioned in the class among their peers
· Mentoring
· Being open to the possibility of students growing and changing
· Imagining ourselves as strategists, constantly improvising and thinking on our feet - introducing alternative methods of learning and all possible resources, peer learning, adult education techniques, radical political involvement, teaching material that is not part of the formal syllabus, filling in gaps
· Drawing interconnections between gender, race, class, ethnicity
· Helping students to be confident about themselves as African, introducing African content into syllabus, challenging western notions of life and culture.

4.6 Looking At Sexuality
Presentation by Sylvia Tamale

Sylvia presented a test case of recent events at Makerere University in Kampala (Uganda) with regard to the issue of sexuality, and specifically homosexuality.

At the beginning of February 2003, Sylvia spoke out in support of including sexual orientation as one of the grounds for non-discrimination in the proposed Equal Opportunities Commission legislation. Since then, she has been subjected to an onslaught of media attacks for her 'irresponsible defence of homosexuality.' Her key argument, that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a violation of human rights, has been ignored by the many Ugandans, ranging from academics to politicians, who have condemned her stand. Making several public statements and appearances to explain the relevance of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation to human rights struggles, the developing debate in Uganda has been heavily skewed towards, at worst, homophobic attacks (as well as attacks on herself), and, at best, naïve perceptions of homosexuality as 'illness'. Sylvia has therefore been engaged in a difficult struggle to establish the status of gay rights as a human rights concern.

This experience prompted Sylvia to begin research in the area of gender, sexuality and identity in Uganda. Preliminary findings revealed that homosexuality existed in Uganda before colonialism, and that it was not 'imported' by the colonisers. Discussions on these issues were not conclusive, but rather opened doors for further exploration and research, and raised questions that were relevant for teaching.

· Is research on homosexuality conclusive?
· Is homosexuality taught, or is it natural (i.e. acquired at birth)?
· What defines homophobia?
· What is the relationship between homosexuality and class, and is there class discrimination?
· Are there two different understandings of homosexuality: one, that it is a gender issue, and two, that it is a human rights issue? Both should be included in any course on sexuality, culture and identity.
· How is culture used by the dominant order to complicate issues of sexuality and stir up sentiment against gays and lesbians? Ignorance and prejudice are also used in this way.
· How does sexuality and marital status affect participants' professional lives, in terms of their employment, the respect they earn from colleagues and superiors, their access to housing, etc.?
· Can humour perhaps be used to challenge students' perceptions of heteronormativity and sexuality?
· How can teachers deal effectively with hostility and antagonism from both male and female students towards these issues?
· And, lastly, how can teachers reconcile the need to assert their own authority with the importance of encouraging debate and discussion among students, as well as resistance against existing norms and values which may be outdated and inappropriate in a new world?

Sylvia's presentation of an extraordinary moment in her life illustrated the power of discourses around sexuality. In this case, the issue caused an eruption and disruption within Ugandan society, creating new possibilities and opportunities. Threatening moments are often the most strategically interesting sites.

4.7 Exercise: Silences And Voice
The facilitator noted that it is often difficult to talk about issues of sexuality. Sexuality is a taboo topic, and even within the working group space, (which is seemingly open and non-threatening), there will be silences. If one agrees on the power of sexuality, culture and identity as a strategic discourse towards transformation, then one has to take very seriously the meaning of silence. We don't yet know how to talk about sexuality publicly with the same authority that we talk about other issues. Participants thus felt it was important to create space to explore the meaning of silence.

Silence Wheel
Each person was asked to reflect and then write down reasons why it might be difficult to talk about sexuality. These were written up on pieces of white paper and placed into a big white circle, creating a blank -- representing a silence. The following points were identified as obstacles to talking openly about sexuality:
· Exploration of sexuality reveals unjust power relationships between men and women
· Socialisation, which teaches us not to talk openly about sexuality, as it is taboo
· Fear of disclosing the personal, embarrassment, ridicule, humiliation
· Religious beliefs and traditional customs, repression
· Habit of silence and the difficulty of turning experience into language
· Sexual violence is difficult to talk about because of stigmatisation and cultural socialisation
· In some African cultures, there are special occasions where women are encouraged to talk freely about sexuality among each other
· In other African societies, there are non-verbal ways of "talking about" sexuality.

It was noted that it is an extreme over-simplification to claim that "it is too difficult to talk" (about such matters). Silences are about power relations that have a hold on us and will not allow us to speak. There is a lot to say, but it may be the case that people have decided to be silent. This dynamic manifests in the classroom, and silences therefore need to be taken seriously as we explore the meaning of discourse as strategy in this area.

Participants were invited to engage in a free writing exercise in order to unpack what the word sexuality signified, and then to share their thoughts on what it meant for them. Associations that emerged included:
· Heterosexual marriage, motherhood, domesticity, reproduction, fertility
· Men's use of ideological perceptions of womanhood (cultural, religious, traditional) to control women, particularly deviant women (various forms of violence and limitations on mobility, thought, action, ways of being)
· Homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, etc.
· Health issues related to the family
· Cultural practices related to sexuality
· Sexual desire, pleasure, fun, freedom, adventure, sexual satisfaction
· Women's use of their bodies to negotiate for power
· Government's control of sexuality
· Pornography, consumerism and voyeurism that objectifies women
· Trafficking in women, abuse of women, violence against women
· Abuse of children and paedophilia
· Birth control, prevention of pregnancy, abortions
· Forbidden pleasures and desires, inhibitions
· Socialisation, religion, power of fear of stigmatisation and hatred
· Media messages about older women and older men, menopause, mid-life crises, monogamy, polygamy and polyandry, affairs with younger / older partners

Participants noted the importance of bearing in mind cultural, religious, social and geographical differences between the participants, so as not to create an oversimplified understanding of sexuality in Africa.

This exercise enabled the group to begin thinking more deeply about sexuality. Moreover, it was noted that it was as important to think through individual positionings and differences as it was to establish what the word sexuality meant to the working group as a collective. The group began to move beyond theorising about the complexity of silence and its multiple routes, acknowledging that the recognition of silencing forces does not mean accepting that silence is ubiquitious or cannot be engaged with.

Tuesday 27th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Deepen understanding of current debates and theorisations on sexuality, culture and identity
· Consensus-building about teaching sexuality, culture and identity

There are many ways of accessing voice, in the sense of speaking and expression. Even if they are not shared, there are routes towards and possibilities for speech. The capacity for speech is and always has been possible, necessary, empowering and radical. Participants were asked to write on coloured paper rays those things that enable voice.

Voice Wheel: What are the routes to speech?
· Hope of transformation, action, commitment to change
· Knowledge, the need to name things
· Surprise, interest, laughter, ease, confidence, courage
· Anger, intolerance, outrage, provocation, radicalism
· Attempts to shock, to confront ignorance and hypocrisy
· Learning and recognizing the speech of sexuality
· Relating social problems to issues of sexuality
· Strategic conformity and resistance
· Sense of the collective, latching onto public debates
· Telling stories that link formal and informal accounts.

4.8 Current Theorisations on Sexuality, Culture and Identity
Presentation by Takyiwaa Manuh and Akosua Adamako

The presenters shared aspects of their work-in-progress textbook: Culture and Gender in African Societies. The target group for the text comprises students and teachers in development, education, gender and women studies, as well as historical and cultural studies. In terms of its sources and the literature it cites, it is a sub-Saharan text. It draws on disciplines such as anthropology, history, literary studies, health, sociology and politics.

The book is divided into three sections. Part 1 explores culture as both impediment and resource. It separates culture and gender, examining local, national and continental dimensions. Part 2 examines the construction of the self in relation to space and culture, looking at creation myths, religion, matriarchy, personhood and taboos. Part 3 defines femininity and masculinity, consciousness and agency, and looks at reproduction and women's survival strategies. The textbook brings together politics and culture, encouraging activism.

4.9 Review Of Sexuality, Culture and Identity Teaching Resources
Input by Charmaine Pereira

Participants identified the central resource challenge as: How are we going to compile and produce the kinds of resources we need in order to teach transformatory GWS? How do we move beyond surface mapping and into engagement with African-centred work and epistemology?

An early attempt to commission a review essay and bibliography in the area of sexuality, culture and identity was not entirely successful. The experience drew attention to a number of challenges. These were summarised by Charmaine (who served as lead discussant), and a stimulating and highly energetic discussion ensued.

It was noted that the terrain needs to be carefully defined. There needs to be a clear statement of how sexuality, culture and identity are to be treated. This will provide a framework for navigating through the literature, as well as demarcating what can be achieved within the scope of a review. The base-line thinking needs to be grounded in existing African thought regarding sexuality, culture and identity (in other words, Fanon and Cabral before moving onto Foucault and more recent postmodernist thinking). CWG members felt it was important to link theory and practice, events on the ground, women's movements and NGO activities in the areas of sexual reproductive health and rights, and to link current legal and policy context with activism and implementation of laws.

Homosexuality was considered to be an important topic, but members noted that vast numbers of women in Africa are in fact married, and that heteronormativity is an underlying assumption in African contexts. Other important issues that were identified include the particular types of work available to women, and the differences between the various African countries with regard to women's issues. The gender dimension of labour reflects sexual realities, and this needs to be forgrounded.

Discussion
CWG members reiterated the importance of the conceptualisation of sexuality, identity and culture, as this is often unclear in the literature. Further power relations are central, and the specific context must be considered when theorising and conceptualising them. Such conceptualisations could include: family, community, culture, economy, globalisation, religion, laws, and education systems.

Neglected areas include:
· Eroticism and pleasure
· Influence of religion (Christianity, Islam, Traditional African Religions, etc.)
· Effect of globalisation, trade, trafficking in women, commodification of women
· The implications of increased militarisation of societies and concomitant increase in sexual violence against women
· Effect of debates on human rights and women's rights
· Regional coverage uneven
· Information from "grey literature" could be very useful (i.e., women's organisations, activist groups, autobiographies, herstories).

The CWG concluded that this work required a team to examine issues, as it was too broad a task for an individual. The meeting then moved on to consider what resources would be most useful to their teaching.

What kinds of resources would facilitate transformatory GWS teaching?
· More texts, more specialised texts, case material, thematic approach or geographically focused?
· Possibility of national reviews, identifying themes within a national and international context.
· Impact of literature written on HIV / Aids.
· Identifying common ground.
· Incorporating earlier anthropological works on sexual identity.
· Resources dealing with violence against women and influence of religion that justifies such violence - importance of regional differences and different approaches used by specific nations.
· Importance of solidarity and women's organisations becoming active in campaigns.
· Difficulty of balancing theory and practice, conceptualisations and generalisations with groundwork, and reconciling the need for solidarity and commonality with the need for specific focus and detail - and how this impacts on the way in which students and school pupils are taught about sexuality, culture and identity.
· Incorporating material from different locations connects us to the rest of the continent.
· Case studies that refer to events reported in the recent media can be useful in illustrating what is happening on the ground.

4.10 Debate: Radical or Pragmatic Approaches to Sexuality, Culture and Identity: "To Sex Or Not To Sex?"
Two positions were allocated in setting up the debate on teaching about sex and sexuality.

Pragmatist group:
Input by Dzodzi Tsikata and Charmaine Pereira

The pragmatists felt it was necessary to remove resistance to the teaching of sexuality, culture and identity and to make the issues respectable in a way that would attract support from men and women, and a large cross-section of the student population, thus attracting more students to such classes. The pragmatists felt this could be achieved by focusing on topics of health, female genital mutilation, GBV, motherhood, economics and sexuality, division of labour production and re-production, HIV/AIDS, sexual orientation, desire and the unconscious. In closing, they argued that the radical approach could frighten students away rather than ensuring student engagement and a subsequent impetus for change to occur.

Radical group
Input by Sylvia Tamale and Jane Bennett

The radicals began with a skit about female ejaculation. They criticised the pragmatic approach for obscuring issues of power and being moderate, thus becoming stagnant and impotent. They noted that the word 'radical' is derivative from the word 'root', i.e. teaching holistically, incorporating the body, the mind, the emotions and the spirit. They argued that change and transformation comes through radicalism, not pragmatism and that students are often drawn to the marginal and the extremes, questioning the status quo, this has to be accommodated within the classroom space.

Discussion
As a teacher, one needs to introduce issues of sexuality, gender, and power politics in ways that do not alienate or overwhelm students. Moreover, the practical issues surrounding running a university, winning support and getting funding mean that radicalism can be of limited use in the classroom. It is thus important to be strategic in choosing an approach that works, depending on content of classes, level of education, location of institution, as well as the teacher's own age, gender and positioning in the institutional hierarchy.

But one must also be open to change and transformation, and there is value in networking across hierarchies. One needs to engage with subversive and radical positions and to explore how these open students to different methodologies and ideologies. The issues of censorship and self-censorship as a response to lack of academic freedom and political interference in universities, as well as market forces, economic status of country and job prospects for students, were highlighted.

In conclusion, it was agreed that the split between pragmatism and radicalism was artificial, although valuable in this instance for the purpose of generating debate. In fact, much more nuanced strategies are already in play. The need to be sensitive and responsive was underlined, as well as the need for personal resources such as courage.

Wednesday 28th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Consensus-building about teaching sexuality, culture and identity
· Experiment with the demands of curriculum development

Exercise: How are we feeling?
Participants each selected a word from a hat and had to use the word to describe how they were feeling. This exercise provided an opportunity to reflect on inner processes in relation to the issues being raised in the working group meeting. Participants noted the importance of recognising and acknowledging the personal, and the difficulties of bringing personal and private matters to the public forum.

4.11 Critiquing Syllabi
The practical importance of the workshop for teaching courses in gender and women's studies, improving existing courses and designing new ones, and building networking links with colleagues across Africa, was reiterated. Participants were asked to keep uppermost in their minds the influence of cultural, religious, political, economic and social factors on education, pedagogy and training methods; the imperative to root theories, ideologies and methodologies in the African context; the value of silence and time to integrate new ideas; and the various ways of dealing with disruptions, challenges, rebellion against the status quo, feminism, activism, radical approaches, and how these can ultimately help in designing courses around sexuality, culture and identity.

A number of syllabi from western institutions, downloaded from the web, were available for examination and critique. This exercise provided a framework for curriculum design. While CWG members felt the curricula were strong in terms of their feminist pedagogic methods, they were problematic in their treatment of Africa.

4.12 Designing Curricula: Group Work
CWG members worked in groups conceptualising new curricula and/or critiquing/developing existing curricula. They were asked to bear the following points in mind:
· How do we learn?
· Principles and practices of pedagogy
· The conceptualisation of sexuality, culture and identity
· African contexts
· Importance of experimentation, and doing so consciously.

Participants focused on the following areas:
· Gender and Sexuality
An existing course being taught
Group members: Mansah Prah, Akosua Adamako
· Gender and Development
A draft new course into which sexuality, culture and identity are to be integrated.
Group Members: Dzodzi Tsikata, Emebet Mulengetta, Mansah Prah, Akosua Adamako
· Ideal course on Gender and Sexuality
Group Members: Sylvia Tamale, Lebohang Letsie, Charmaine Perreira
· Feminist Pedagogies: Guidelines for Curricula Design
Group Members: Abiola Odejide, Priya Narismalu, Shereen Essof

Thursday 29th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Critique and review curricula
· Consolidate future tasks in preparation for the next CWG meeting

Curricula were presented in plenary.

4.13 Learnings, Needs and Wants
In moving towards closure, the CWG members reflected on their learnings, needs and wants.

Learnings

· A deeper appreciation of sexuality, identity and culture in African contexts, as a strategically imperative political terrain
· Deprivatising sexuality and bringing it in more centred ways to what we teach
· The politics of teaching and teaching as politics
· Curricula as a strategy for transformation
· The need to strengthen our work in curriculum design
· Innovative teaching strategies, activist learning tools and facilitation techniques
· The use of everyday events in teaching
· Availability of different (African) resources that support GWS teaching/learning - grey material, published texts, books and journals, films, videos, etc.
· The need to engage more widely and deeply, to have more focus and more ambitious dreams, plans and schemes for making this work collectively for our various sites
· Belief in the value of collective input in developing ideas. Working in community enables a range of experiences and skills to be pooled, creating synergies
· Being true to the values we affirm and checking them off against our course designs
· The need to share with each other and to support each other in our work
· Recognising the urgency of the project and the fragility of resources and support systems.

Needs / Wants
· Continued networking at group and interpersonal levels, and across institutional sites, to continue learning and revitalise energies
· More time to reflect and apply these learnings to our own curriculum work, and to work out how to do this
· A clear understanding of how to link sexuality and culture with identity, so that this relationship is appreciated by students
· A clear appreciation as to why sexuality could be a strategic space/place/subject in GWS
· Sensitivity in creating syllabi so not as to objectify women (or men), or to eroticise the African body
· To investigate the connections between theory and practice more thoroughly (more conscious, more critical, more research)
· The CWG report on proceedings
· Feminist pedagogical perspectives
· Case studies on our pedagogy as activism
· Curricula generated during the CWG meeting
· Supporting resources that can be used in the teaching of sexuality, culture and identity, including bibliographies, texts, grey literature, film and videos and online resources
· Resource pack for teaching sexuality from an African feminist transformatory perspective
· To address students/community needs through the curriculum
· To pay more attention to the links between teaching, research, disciplinary and students' needs, and those between institutional and community needs
· Laughter!

Friday 30th May 2003

Objectives for the day:
· Consolidate future tasks in preparation for next CWG meeting
· Evaluate and review meeting and process

Exercise: How am I feeling?
In moving towards closure, CWG members were asked to identify an object, reflect on the week's activities and deliberations, and indicate how they were feeling. Members felt stimulated, energised, inspired and excited. Some were fatigued, but all were enriched by the week's deliberations. There was an appreciation of the methodology used, as well as "new" pedagogical techniques.

4.14 Future Directions: Plans and Intentions

Reflecting on the learnings, needs and wants articulated the previous day, CWG members committed to a number of activities to further the thinking and reflection begun at the first CWG meeting. These undertakings related to the participants' current and ongoing activities. Commitments included:
· Searching for locally generated resources that could be shared at the next meeting of CWG
· Review of existing material in the area of sexuality, culture and identity, and feminist pedagogy
· Production of annotated bibliographies
· Production of case studies and curricula, the delivery of courses and conference papers in the area of sexuality, culture and identity
· Using GWS as strategy for transformation within the classroom
· Sharing information through continued networking with CWG members and other colleagues
· Preparing for and a commitment to attend the second CWG meeting to be held in September 2003.

4.15 Closure

The first Curriculum Working Group Meeting ended with thanks to the IAS for hosting the meeting, and to all the participants for a full and enriching week.