Together for Change: Innovating Strategies and Tools to Advocate for Gender Equality in V4 Countries

"The project “Together for Change: Innovating Strategies and Tools to Advocate for Gender Equality in V4 Countries” brings together four NGOs operating in V4 region focusing on promoting antidiscrimination principles and enhancing gender equality – Fórum 50 % (promoting gender balance in politics and decision-making), TEA (focusing on anti-discrimination education), Hungarian Women’s Lobby (Hungarian national coordination of the European Women’s Lobby) and Možnosť volby (focusing on women’s human rights, feminism and gender equality). We will also cooperate with European Women’s Lobby (EWL) as an associated partner providing their knowledge and experience and in return achieving better understanding of the current situation in V4 region. The participants representing each organization will be gender experts and/or researchers and trainers some of them with a track record in advocacy work, policy analysis and policy making. The project reacts to current socio-political climate in V4 countries: growing populist tendencies, negative attitude to EU and related ongoing backlash in gender equality and rights of women and girls across V4 countries. This backlash is enhanced by limiting financial resources and opportunities for organizations focusing on gender equality issues. In this situation organizations and individuals focusing on gender issues need to build their capacities in order to be able to efficiently advocate for the cause. These organizations usually have excellent knowledge of gender issues and theories but sometimes lack skills and competences needed for efficient advocacy work. Such skills are essential in order to keep gender issues on the agenda and sustain available financial resources intended to support the cause. The main objective is to provide project partners as well as other NGOs and civil society representatives with various types of materials needed for efficient advocacy for promoting gender equality reflecting on the specific situation of V4 countries. In order to accomplish this goal we will elaborate 4 country reports analysing the current situation in all V4 countries accompanied with regional comparison. Following these findings each partner will produce policy brief designed specifically for their country containing the basic statistical data together with main arguments pro antidiscrimination policies and gender equality and policy recommendations. In order to enhance public support for the cause we will elaborate simple awareness-raising materials (tailored specifically for each country) intended for media and general public. The main output will be an advocacy toolkit containing best practices, lessons learned and methods of efficient advocacy work in the field of promoting gender equality which will be disseminated beyond the partnership in order to increase impact of the project and its outcomes. Our intended methodology is based on ""learning by doing"" approach. In order to gain the best results each output will be prepared on the basis of researching similar types of materials in order to be able to identify the best practices and incorporate them into innovative materials produced within a partnership. As a method for mapping the current state of gender equality in the region quantitative and qualitative research and analysis will be deployed. Partners will share the experiences and good practices accumulated during the project implementation with their staff and other stakeholders via the train-the-trainer methodology. The transnational cooperation and mutual learning is very important for the aim of the project. Based on our previous and ongoing collaboration with partners from various European countries we find that sharing knowledge and experience is very useful and relevant for the work of all the involved organizations. Mutual cooperation of organizations based in different cultural contexts on one project enables us to expose several more or less visible aspects of the problem. Organizations striving for gender equality face very similar counterarguments (very often based on widespread myths, half-truths and lies). This is caused by the fact the opponents of promoting gender equality (calling it “gender ideology”) are very well organized across various EU countries. Intentional connection of NGOs promoting gender equality will enable them to understand their situation in a broader context, learn and share proven strategies of advocacy work and as a result help to improve state of gender equality (on both practical and discursive level). In order to disseminate the outputs more efficiently and enhance networking of project’s target groups each partner will organize a multiplier event in its respective country bringing together NGOs and civil society representatives promoting gender equality. All outputs will be actively disseminated also via partners’ and EWL’s means of communication (websites, social media, newsletters etc.)."