Programme: Erasmus+, Key Action 1: training course for youth workers
Venueí: Yerevan, Armenia
Dates: 1—9 December 2021
Please read the info-pack.
Participating countries: The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece and Romania) and non-EU Neighboring countries (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine).
Hosting organisations: Jongeren voor Uitwisseling en Begrip (Nizozemí) & Armenian Progressive Youth NGO
Czech team: František Zeman, Michal Šťastný, Tomáš J.
Project report:
Three-person Czech team attended a training course “Straightening gender mainstreaming in youth work”, between 1st and 9th December, in Yerevan, Armenia. This Erasmus+ project was organized by a renowned Armenian NGO “Armenian Progressive Youth” or APY, and was lead by two APY facilitators, one APY organizer and one partner organizer from Netherlands. Czech team arrived to the project a day earlier and left a day later, mostly because of the available flight connections, but didn’t fail to take advantage of the extra free time to explore out of Yerevan Armenia further.
The accommodation was of reasonable quality, in a hotel with rooms of two or three beds. Food was provided five times a day, usually in hotel’s dining room with a good choice of food, including vegetarian, with exception on a field trip day, when we ate in a restaurant in the city center.
The program was mostly focused on discussing various gender equality policies and discrimination based on minority identity, as well as discussing various aspects of feminist ideology. This politically charged topic did stir some interesting debates between participants and facilitators that held different views of the topic. During a field trip day, we had the opportunity to visit and observe activities at three different NGOs focusing on such topics, residing in Yerevan. There were also opportunities for participants to present their own activity, most notably Human Library concept from the Dutch team and piece on genital mutilation in Africa from the Egyptian participant.
We also had the opportunity to visit a memorial and museum of Armenian genocide, on the top of the hill overseeing the city, museum of a famous Armenian artist and Ararat liquor plant.
A day before and day after the project, Czech team also organized trips deeper into out-of-Yerevan Armenia, not wasting any opportunity to explore further, but also to get to know each other better. For the last day trip, we were also joined by a newly made friend from Bulgaria and another, who was an Armenian local.
