Rights Now has been an experience, more than a project, of gathering people around a common need.
It has been organized by SEYF with the support of the Italian National Agency for Youth (Agenzia Nazionale Giovani) within the frame of the Erasmus Plus Programme and in cooperation with the local NGOs involved in the promotion of rights LGBTQIA*: Arcigay Salento, LeA - Liberamente E Apertamente,
Agedo Lecce, Say Yes and Ra.Ne. Rainbow Network).
The project successfully involved 28 motivated participants Italy, Malta, Spain, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Estonia and Bulgaria. Specifically, the experience represents an important step in the SEYF policies to promote gender equality in the European Sociaty and to foster a more inclusive society, by stimulating the creation of active network working on the field.
The project follows other actions developed by SEYF with the priority to explore the LGBTQIA* universe.
The project idea came after sharing ideas, experiences and opinions in order to take actions, at European level, within the frames of LGBTQIA* rights. In consideration of the many forms of discrimination and violence acted for sexual orientation, we figured out to plan activities of detailed study, in-depth analysis and actions of support to the LGBTQIA* community for supporting NGOs and youth workers.
During the last two year, we firstly analized how, in most cases, young people and youth workers suffer a lack of awareness on gender and sexuality-based violence, and do not know enough on how its mechanisms work. Afterwards, we worked for by-passing some obstacoles and we started to cooperate in order to plan and put in action the project Right Now.
RIGHTS NOW has been implemented in Novoli - Lecce (IT) from 23th to 28th April 2018 it involved 27 participants from NGOs from Italy, Malta, Spain, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Estonia and Bulgaria and 1 trainer from Italy.
Rights Now specific objective were the development of competences and knowledge of people working with youngsters, in order to act as advocates of greater gender equality in their communities by using non-formal learning approach and tools.
Coherently with the Erasmus+ programme, during the project all the methodologies implemented promoted active participation and active learning of participants. The international training course has been based on learning by doing methodology: participants had the opportunitiy to learn about non formal education by experiencing it directly, and not by just by receiving passive or vertical information.
All the information sessions have also been integrated through an interactive approach. The main methodological approaches used were: reciprocal maieutic approach, experiential learning, cooperative learning, participation and peer learning. The main methods we implemented were: brainstorming, team building and energizers, presentations, world café, Open Space Tecnology.
The result of the training course is the current Training Hand-Book that includes the most crucial theoretical inputs on the topic, information about the gender issues in the participating countries and also tools that may be used for promoting gender equality at the local level. Thus, the results of Rights Now can be also shared and implemented in other youth-work contexts and in different communities.
In a longer-term perspective we expect the young people and youth workers involved to be more gender-aware and sensitive, in oder to be able to detect situations and contexts where gender-based discrimination and violence occur and to take proper action for promoting gender equality both locally, nationally as well as in EU-SMC contexts. By increasing knowledge, changing attitudes, developing skills and acquiring innovative tools, we expect the partner organizations and participants from EU and SMC to be able to involve young people in being change-makers.
Read out the Rights Now- ebook
