Conference: Gender Mainstreaming in Culture, Youth, Media, and Labour Market initiatives

Gender equality is a fundamental human right and an important prerequisite for a strong civil society. The New Democracy Fund is committed to work for the advancement of gender equality and inclusion in the Eastern Neighborhood Countries, as a cross-cutting theme, through gender-specific activities and in the format of dialogues on the topic to sensitize the partner’s advancement of gender equality and inclusion.

From the 2-3 of November the New Democracy Fund hosted the partner consultation “Gender Mainstreaming in Culture, Youth, Media, and Labour Market initiatives” in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Together with our partners from the Eastern Neighbourhood Countries, we explored gender mainstreaming in culture, youth, media, and labour market initiatives to gain better insight and understanding of gender issues in the region.

The countries represented at the conference each face different challenges and barriers for reaching gender equality. Therefore, the conference sought to explore the similarities in the challenges and barriers facing the work for gender equality as a first step to identifying potential ways of future collaborations.

The conference contributed to deepened knowledge-sharing, networking and learnings across thematic areas and will feed into the future NDF engagements with civil society partners in the Eastern Neighborhood Countries.

”The cohesion between culture, employability, and youth, and how it connects to gender and minorities is my biggest take-away” said participant Teodora Panus, National Youth Council of Moldova.

Objectives of the conference

• To ignite networking and exchange between local partners of NDF
• To introduce NDF consortium members and local partners to knowledgeable organisations, experts, and resources on gender equality and inclusion, who can contribute to their programming with gender in focus
• For NDF, NDF consortium members and local partners, to gain better insight and understanding of gender issues in the region, become better at fully mainstream gender equality and inclusion of the supported initiatives

Programme for the conference

• Theatre/Audio Performance “Performing gender in times of conflict”.
• Welcome and introduction of programme and partners.
• Joint Challenges – Joint Solutions: Panel discussion on challenges and barriers for reaching gender equality in the region.
• Women, Peace, and Security: Workshop on how to work with gender in the context of conflict and uncertainty.
• Approach, tools, and focus within:
  • Media projects and initiatives.
  • Labour Market projects and initiatives.
  • Youth projects and initiatives.
  • Culture projects and initiatives.
• Discussion on experiences and approaches across fields.
• Concluding remarks.

The conference was moderated by Julie Arnfred Bojesen (DK), director of the Ukrainian-Danish Youth House and Baia Pataraia (GE), executive director of the women’s rights organisation Sapari.

Photos by: Tamar Korakhashvili