Gender-based discrimination is present in a lot of forms in Europe. About 35% of European youngsters declare that they were discriminated on the basis of their gender (according to the European Youth Forum) and each country presents cultural standards differentiating what women and men can or should do. Furthermore, those who's sex and gender identity do not match are widely unaccepted by society and face constant discrimination and exclusion. Statistics show this is not a localised problem, but a general, international one, with no community being free of its effects, as partners also confirm. In the countries participating in the project 20 to 45% of our youngsters are still perpetuating the same stereotypes on gender, and social pressure and other forms of oppression of women are surprisingly present, with min. 30% of women we address declaring they face these. In the face of these and especially in the Covid-19 crisis we have a limited capacity to intervene as there are limited possibilities to interact in person with young people and the programmes we use were developed for in-person workshops, therefore have limited potential for being transferred to on-line; In this context the project we are presenting aims is to educate young people for embracing gender equality. It proposes a radical shift in how anti-bias education is offered to EU nationals, by switching from the traditional lectures or in-person "trainer to trainee" approach to peer-lead on-line workshops that use drama and digital tools as base for experiential learning. This innovative approach takes advantage of the powerful role drama can have in shaping learning experiences and also of the accessibility and scalability of on-line learning platforms. Together with the peer-lead process, these will increase cognitive load, student engagement and active learning. It also has the advantage of shorter training periods of peer trainers, a more efficient local up-scaling process, having more and long lasting impact, being a more appealing approach and having good potential for a "viral" effect of the attitudes we aim to improve. For this, our objectives are to: - increase the capacity of 6 European NGOs to combat gender based discrimination among young people, by creating an effective on-line resource that can facilitate this - reduce at least three manifestation related to gender-based discrimination among at least 100 young people from 3 EU countries during the lifetime of the project, using the programme. The main output of the project will be a training programme that uses on-line experiential learning in a peer-lead learning process. On the medium term, our objective is to offer free access to the peer-to-peer educational solution we will develop and for at least 100 youth-serving organisations to actively use it in the next 5 years, reaching more than 10 000 beneficiaries. The theory of change the project proposes is that by taking part in the educational programme we will develop young people from EU countries will no longer engage in gender-based oppression. Hence, in terms of outcomes, the project aims to bring positive effects to: - young people (typically the ones aged 14 - 30, with a stronger impact on the ones from discriminated genders), by improving their well-being and safety as a result of reducing manifestations related to gender-based oppression in at least 70% of them - youth and youth-serving organisations, by helping them increase their impact in their communities, as a result of putting at their disposal a modern and effective peer education programme on combating gender-based discrimination, comprising in tools and practices that allow them to offer more qualitative and effective activities for their beneficiaries; - young people who wish to be active in their societies, by supporting their active involvement and equipping them with the competencies and tools they need for promoting a positive change in their communities (as a result of their participation as peer trainers in the project). The intended beneficiaries of the programme are young people from Europe and beyond. During the life of the project, more than 150 of them will benefit from it. The programme is aimed to be implemented by networks of young peer trainers (typically 16 to 30), coordinated by youth-serving organisations. In the piloting phase of the programme, 24 young people from 4 countries will be educated to use the programme and to lead peer-to-peer workshops in their communities.
Our goal was to educate young people in order for them to embrace gender equality through peer-lead on-line workshops that use drama and digital tools as base for experiential learning. This being decided, we set these main objectives: O1: to increase the capacity of 6 European NGOs to combat gender based discrimination among young people, by creating an effective on-line resource that can facilitate this; O2: to reduce at least three manifestation related to gender-based discrimination among at least 100 young people from 3 EU countries during the lifetime of the project, using the programme.
When we all came together and decided to apply for this project, we had in mind the idea that gender-based discrimination is present in a lot of forms all across Europe. We found out that about 35% of European youngsters declare that they were discriminated on the basis of their gender (according to the European Youth Forum) and each country presents cultural standards differentiating what women and men can or should do. As a result, as revealed by the 2019 "Report on Equality Between Women and Men in the EU" of the European Commission, in all the 4 participating countries (Romania, Greece, Belgium and Portugal), gender inequality is manifested in most of the areas of daily life: education, family life & family roles, or even language. Furthermore, those who's sex and gender identity do not match are widely unaccepted by society and face constant discrimination and exclusion. Statistics show this is not just a local problem, but a general, international one, with no community being free of its effects, as partners also confirmed. As a result, in December 2018 the Council of the EU expressed its concerns and manifested its expectations from the European Commission to foster and promote gender equality in nonformal education by taking appropriate steps to ensure that all youth workers and educators are provided with competences in the areas of gender equality. When it comes to our local context things were no better and certainly not encouraging. As we also mentioned in the application form, these were our findings, the basis of the initiative called Peers for Equality – Creative Learning Platform: 1. 20 to 45% of our youngsters were still perpetuating the same stereotypes on gender; social pressure and other forms of oppression of women were surprisingly present, with minimum 30% of women declaring they faced these on a regular basis; 2. Our capability was quite limited when it came to tackling these issues, especially in the Covid-19 crisis as: there were limited possibilities to interact in person with young people; the programmes we used were developed for in-person workshops and had limited potential for being transferred to on-line activities; 3. In the EPTO network the Peers for Equality programme we were using proved to be effective. Still, the SWOT analysis conducted by involving over 25 members revealed the following weaknesses: - in-person workshops were very effective but time and resource consuming, so they limited the speed of the up-scaling; - peer trainers had limited availability for being trained and it was difficult to find a common interval when all were available to be trained; - difficulties encountered in getting resources to ensure the accommodation, food and trainers costs for the whole duration of the two phases of training in which the peer trainers should participate. Therefore, we all agreed that we need to develop an improved programme for combating gender based discrimination that addressed the above mentioned weaknesses and threats. The most feasible solution we identified was to make an online learning platform that would allow organisations to deliver such workshops using digital tools. Of course, things were not as easy as they seem because the experiential learning process we typically use cannot be simply adapted to on-line and needs a significantly different approach. To find a solution for this, we leaned on ACTOR’s and INFOREF’s experience in using drama as a starting point for the on-line experiential learning process, which was afterwards mixed with our typical peer to peer approach.