ACTIVITIES OF THE PROJECT

TRAINING COURSE

1st activity

The first activity held within the project was a training course, held in Stip, Macedonia, from 1st until 8th of April. This training course was hosted and organized by PEL, our partner organization from FYROM Macedonia, very experienced in gender issues and with a great capacity to host international events. This organization provided one trainer and one staff for the training. The training course addressed challenges and creating opportunities for gender equality, equity, with a particular emphasis on gender based violence issues. The main milestone to be achieved by this activity was to bring together 27 youth workers/leaders/activists trained in gender matters, gender equality and equity, gender mainstreaming and training them on how to address and work with gender based violence situations. It was almost fully achieved, but during the training course, we had one missing participant from Italy, who could not be physically present due to some personal problems. Besides this, the participation of the other 26 participants was to be applauded, since they were very active and they generously contributed to the efficiency of each session by sharing their work experience, country challenges and personal resolutions to the topics evoked. 4 trainers and facilitators worked hard to make the process of training run smoothly, out of whom, 1 trainer and 1 staff were provided by our partner organization PEL.

YOUTH EXCHANGE

2nd activity

The second activity was a youth exchange, held in Pogradec, Albania, from 15th to 23rd of May. The main focus of this youth exchange was to bring a perspective on gender based violence in the eyes of young people and have their ideas shared and discussed. This youth exchange was organized and hosted by AfS, with its expertise in youth work in the region, and its previous experience on tackling gender based violence issues, particularly approaching rural areas. In this youth exchange, there were in total 36 participants, 9 team leaders for each representative country and also one staff from AfS to facilitate the process, as foreseen in the project application. The main milestone to be achieved by this youth exchange was to gather 45 young people to discuss and explore the problems related to gender based violence on each country, emphasizing the need to react and prevent this phenomenon among youth. During this youth exchange, there were produced videos, blog writings, articles, theater forum, and also a flash mob in the center of the city Pogradec, where the youth exchange was hosted.

SEMINAR

3rd activity

The third activity was a seminar held in Tirana, from 4th to 10th of August. The main focus of this activity was to address different perspectives on gender issues and also to create further opportunities on regard of youth work based on gender. The main milestone of this activity was to bring together 27 youth workers and tackle the topic of everyday responses to violence in everyday life and how can youth work help to minimize it and support the victims of gender based violence. As part of this activity, a fieldwork survey was made by the participants in local level and recommendations on how to deal with gender in youth work came up as a result at the end of the seminar. As for the participants, we had full participation by each partner organization from representative countries, but there were two issues concerning the participation: one participant from Turkey was aged 16 and another participant from Greece was almost 18 years old, which means under the official age of 20 to participate in the seminar. These were the only issues we encountered during the process of education in the seminar.