It is apparent that in many fields gender gap is a fact, such as labour, rights enjoyment, social discriminations, political participation etc. Gender inequality has been at the core of discussion of European Commission since 2006 with the Roadmap for equality between women and men and in 2016 with EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development. The growing gender violence among young people (WHO data: over 10,000 deaths in one year in Europe), particularly millennials, require a deep understanding of the phenomenon, while implementing innovative practices in terms of preemption in youth working through digital practices and countering-hatred approach. Plus, the presence of new challenges in terms of digital education as well as intercultural issues, also due to the refugee massive incoming, gender as autonomous theme of discussion has partly lost its track and its impact in terms of public opinion. As youth trends with reference to gender roles and growing sexual violence, particularly in the cyber-space, are becoming a structural situation, there is a strong need in radically change such a situation investing in high quality youth working. However, empirically, many associations treat gender issues more as an add-on to their work, rather than a structural issue. This means that gender matters are reduced to a simple ratio balance (e.g. how many men/women are involved in a training course), or how the concrete accommodation of participants is arranged or about special courses aimed at ‘solving’ the issue. Differently, gender must mainstreamed, which means to understand the role of youth workers and how project/activities design, educational activities, implementation, monitoring, attitudes/approach determine the overall gender discussion among youth organisations. The focus on young people is also to break the stereotype about the automatic open-mindedness of youth who often ignore or are not prepared enough to counter stereotypes or gender roles, substantially repeating existing models. The project “GENDERS” aims at favouring the gender mainstream approach within youth organisations supporting them to detect their grade of ‘gender-friendliness’ through an ICT tool converting input data (e.g. a questionnaire) into a measurable outcome expressed in a synthetic graphic indicator, giving practical advice in how to better gender planning/implementation/evaluation within youth organisational work, and setting youth working standards for “gendertrainers”. The ICT tool will be integrated into a web-platform offering also support from problem identification, awareness and creative solution ideas for collective decision-making, as well as new practices to be included in youth working activities in the technical features of an e-learning environment. What is more, best-practice sharing and multiple learning mobility of youth workers & youth from different youth organisations, will lead one to create a viable and easy-to-read handbook to be released in order to be a practical reference for other organisations willing to repeat the applied methods and to mainstream gender in their everyday activities. Specific objectives: - Train youth workers and youth leaders and develop their competences in gender-mainstreaming through simplified ICT tools developing a Step-by-Step Framework (SFF) and an Open Badges System (OBS) to be tested/complete through three specific training sessions during the project life time; - Support local projects in gender-mainstreaming, concretely supporting organisations in ameliorating their approach and their projects, involving youth workers/leaders/youth who do not necessarily support gender causes. - Create a web-platform thought to be as a learning room hosting an interactive online step-by-step web tool to guide in a simplified way youth workers/leaders/organisational staff/etc. in learning how to deploy a gender-mainstreaming plan where they can train/consult FAQ/orienteer better. Learning qualification will be issued through Open Badge System after the completion of the free educational video units. The project is supported by four partners coming from Belgium, Spain, Italy and Romania, committed to create a sort of movement in recognising gender-friendly organisations through a sticker to put on their office doors after having accessed to the GENDERS platform. The need for a shared European work can also create the momentum for institutional awareness to facilitate the job in terms of gender themes, trans-gender and minority women rights.
It is apparent that, in many fields such as labour, rights enjoyment, social discriminations and political participation, gender gap is a fact. For the European Commission, gender inequality has been at the core of discussions since the creation of the Roadmap for equality between women and men in 2006, followed by the EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development in 2016. The growing gender violence among young people (WHO data: over 10,000 deaths in one year in Europe), particularly millennials, requires a deep understanding of the phenomenon and an effective implementation of innovative practices in terms of preemption in youth working through digital practices and countering-hatred approach. Plus, with the presence of new challenges in terms of digital education as well as intercultural issues, partly due to recent migrations and flows of refugees, gender as an autonomous theme of discussion has partly lost its track and its impact in terms of public opinion. As youth trends with reference to gender roles and growing sexual violence, particularly in the cyber-space, are becoming a structural situation, we have shown a strong need in radically changing such a situation by investing in high-quality youth working. However, empirically, many associations in Europe still treat gender issues more as an add-on to their work than as a structural issue. This means that gender matters are reduced to a simple ratio balance (e.g. how many men/women are involved in a training course), to how the concrete accommodation of participants is arranged, or only to the organisation of special courses aimed at ‘solving’ the issue. On the other hand, the GENDERS project has entailed a systematic attempt to focus on a simple yet complex methodology to make gender mainstreaming feasible and attractive for young people and youth workers new to the topic. GENDERS has focused on gender-mainstreaming as a way to support youth organisations in assessing their work through gender lenses, would it be when it comes to their structure (board of members, decision-making mechanisms, etc.), their youth work activities, their internal and external communication, and the level of equity in the involvement of their volunteers. The focus of the project has also been on young people to challenge and break down stereotypes and to address youth who often ignore or are not prepared enough to counter traditional and inflexible gender roles, substantially repeating existing models. Our work has been to create a simple way to self-assess one’s youth organisation through an online questionnaire on gender-friendliness - the idea has been to set up a tool to convert input data into a measurable outcome that could guide young people of youth organisations to have a clear idea about their work on gender mainstreaming. The ICT tool has been integrated into www.gendersproject.eu, a web-platform which also offers support from problem identification, awareness and creative solution ideas for collective decision-making, as well as new practices to be included in youth working activities in the technical features of an e-learning environment. The ICT tool and the information and methodology in it has been compiled based on 1) national research carried out in all the project partners’ countries, which emphasised the current needs and existing practices on the topic 2) the input and feedback from youth at the three training events organised 3) the input and feedback from youth at the many dissemination activities organised by different partners. The three trainings organised within the project played a specific role in the development of the final output: participants of C1 were asked for input and discussed the methodology and topics needed to be addressed, participants of C2 were beta-testing the platform, giving further input and feedback and participants of C3 were using the platform as a learning tool, giving feedback to the final details. The target groups of the trainings were thus selected accordingly, C1 and C2 were targeted towards staff, youth workers and trainers working on gender mainstreaming, while C3 was targeted towards youth and youth workers not knowledgeable or involved in the topic yet. In addition to the participants of the trainings, many other target groups were involved in the project. The many dissemination activities and side projects of the partners involved thousands more young people all around Europe. Workshops, presentations of and consultations on the platform were conducted with youth. Experts, policy- and decision-makers and other NGO representatives were involved in conferences, panel discussions and activities to bring youth together with the important stakeholders of the field. The project has been supported by four partners coming from Belgium, Spain, Italy and Romania active in gender education in the youth field in Europe.