Women Empowerment for Local Development

"<< Background >>When we came up with our project idea, we focused on our organizational needs to develop the quality of Adult Education works provided at the local level with women coming from various backgrounds, particularly immigrant women and women in NEET. Our aim determined as exchanging good practices to improve and extend the supply of high-quality learning opportunities targeting the disadvantaged women in our societies. In order to raise our organizational capacity and equip our members who make interventions to empower women; we wanted to learn and exchange the good practices in Adult Education field at European level with the contribution of our partner organizations which are ADAPTO from Romania and POVOD from Slovenia. In addition to internal capacity raising with 15 months of implementation process, our prior needs were detected according to the needs of women arised after the pandemic. As we conducted previous meetings with our target group - women during application stage, they mentioned that they would like to increase their digital competences, learn more about eco-friendly practices and sustainable understanding to contribute to household management to respond to the current needs of their families and closer environment.<< Objectives >>As a result of 15 months of cooperation; we wanted to ensure that 3 NGOs exchanged good practices on women empowerment and thus would bring the European dimension and quality at local works. As it was our first project that we experienced cooperating with European NGOs working in the field of women's studies, we wanted to raise our institutional and operational capacities with the implementation of a prestigious project. As there were key experts assigned to lead the training phases at local and international levels, we wanted to create a training module and methods to be implemented in 3 countries to address the needs of women in 3 pillars. Since our partnership consortium's working field is derived from Non-Formal Education activities to develop the self-confidence and methodological capacities of women coming from various backgrounds, we wanted to find new techniques to encounter our regular members to transform them into the new generation of educators. As a result, we wanted to provide local trainings and international opportunities to disadvantaged women to raise their competences on digital, citizenship and learning to learn to better understand their own reality and come up with sustainable interventions.<< Implementation >>In the scope of 15 months of cooperation, 4 international mobilities and complimentary local activities are implemented to raise the capacity of women coming from various backgrounds. Realized International Mobilities are; Kick Off Meeting in Turkey on Feb 2022, International Training Course in Romania on September 2022, Study Visit in Slovenia on January 2023, Learners Mobility - Final Conference - Final Evaluation Meeting at the same time on May 2023. In order to reflect these international practices on the local level, we implemented Round Table Meetings, ""Change Starts with You"" Module Development, Local Trainings and Dissemination Campaigns in 3 countries.<< Results >>As a result of 15 months of cooperation, 13 adult educators who raised their methodological capacities have run the local trainings with 164 disadvantaged women from 3 countries to develop their competences and contribute their household management. During the implementation process, a project Facebook Channel is launched to reach further beneficiaries introduce the outcome to local community. 19 active and motivated women from 3 countries found chance to participate in international mobilitiy first time in their life in the scope of Learners Mobility. Through this mobility, they increased their Cultural Awareness and Expression, Cizitenship, Entrepreneurship, Multilingual Competences, Digital Competences. In addition to the direct beneficiaries of our project, implementation of Study Visit enhanced us to establish structured dialogue in 3 countries with the stakeholders coming from public and civil institutions which are working in the field of women studies. Within the creation of ""Change Starts with You"" Training Module, we have created a reference document for our internal capacities to better equip our volunteers, adult educators who regularly come together with the women coming from disadvantaged backgrounds."