Training of Trainers (ToT) on Gender mainstreaming

TC "Training of Trainers on Gender Mainstreaming" is 6 days program that will be organized in Ulcinj, Montenegro, by SOS Podgorica, and will gather 36 youth workers, leaders, volunteers and members of NGOs dealing with youth (18 participants from Program countries and 18 participants from SEE). Countries involved are: Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR of Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovak Republic, Romania, Croatia, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Germany and Italy. Main goal is to contribute to future better social inclusion and participation of all and increase understanding of youth workers, leaders, volunteers that gender mainstreaming is an essential part of all aspects of their partnership projects and is crucial for lasting growth and democracy in their countries and it also symbolizes a society’s level of political maturity. Equal participation of women and men in all aspects of society is crucial for lasting growth and democracy. It also symbolizes a society’s level of political maturity. In the past decade, the European Union has embraced a new and broader agenda for equal opportunities between women and men. By contrast with the Union’s traditional focus on equal pay and equal treatment in the workplace, this new agenda also includes specific positive actions on behalf of women, as well as a new commitment to ‘mainstream’ gender throughout the policy process. One of the objectives of this TC/project are that young people from EU and SEE understand that inclusion and equality are processes that needs to be supported, are not something that will just happen in their work and it cannot be something we add on to make our application more acceptable by saying for example “we don’t discriminate” or “we treat everyone the same”or that “men and women are working together, so there is no need to focus separately on their respective needs.”. Gender is not the same as sex, and it is not only about women: gender in general refers to the socially constructed roles appropriate for men and women in any society at any given time, governed by power relations. Gender mainstreaming is not an additional issue to other factors organizations need to take into account when planning or implementing youth project and partnerships (such as financial efficiency, accounting, trans-nationality, empowerment, coordination and so on) but crucial integrated part of them. This TC aims to contribute to future better social inclusion and participation of all and increase understanding of youth workers, leaders that gender mainstreaming is an essential part of all these aspects of their partnership projects. In EU 2013 is year of Citizens (http://europa.eu/citizens-2013/) and with this project we want to inspire young people around Europe to build a vision of more equal and more gender sensible EU in 2020.