The Shanarani Youth-led Project

Background Gender stereotypes affect us since before we are born as we start life in a society that comes with expectations, beliefs and structures that will impact and affect our lives. The only way for us to challenge this is to defy the current paradigm. Based on the results made in the Shanarani project from 2017, the Shanarani Youth-led Project focuses on working WITH young people rather than FOR young people. Professionals were trained on youth-led methodologies and young people were allowed and motivated to lead on their own discovery around the issues of gender stereotypes. In this way, young people were active participants in their own growth rather than mere spectators. Despite youth-led methodology been continuously proven to be the best way to create long-lasting change in young people, it is still not used very often when it comes to having discussions around gender. Moreover, most trainings out there lean towards the unequal treatment of just one specific gender. With this project, we created resources that support young people to connect the theories behind gender stereotypes to their own life, to analyse the media they encounter every day and to evaluate different scenarios they have experienced themselves. Objectives Through the Shanarani Youth-led Project the partners aim to: - Raise awareness of what gender stereotypes are - Increase understanding on how gender stereotypes exist for all genders - Enable young people to actively influence the discussion on gender stereotypes and connect it to their own life with practical examples and media they are interested in (with the help of movies and television shows) - Provide youth workers with an innovative and engaging way to motivate young people to think about how they are influenced by modern media - Provide youth workers with various ways to engage with the young people, by means of direct face-to-face youth-led training, an online game, or a mobile application - Develop a better cross-sector cooperation with local and international actors - The chance to test hybrid and online working methodologies on approaching gender based violence and human rights education - Bring the theme closer to hundreds of young people across Europe - Develop a highly functional international network and to use the great learning opportunities offered through the partnership. - Promote an European Identity - Create outputs that can be used all over Europe independently of the language and educational level Implementation The project partners developed the four main results with the help of regular meetings and discussions to produce the best outcomes possible. 1. Workshops for youth workers, for the training manual to teach them how to implement activities to engage young people in learning about gender stereotypes and recognising them. Implemented with 138 youth workers across Europe. 2. Workshops for young people, directly implementing the developed activities to raise their competences in identifying and reducing gender stereotypes. Implemented with 166 young people across Europe. 3. Piloting of the online game to test for user-friendliness, quality of learning content and impact of the online learning approach with over 100 young people 4. Piloting of the mobile application to also test for user-friendliness, quality of content and impact of the learning, as well as, to improve the reach of the project and its learning content, with 100 young people. 5. two books with all the results, learnings and recommendations. 5. One multiplier event per country, further promoting and disseminating the project and its outcomes Furthermore, all partners disseminated and promoted the project and results at other events across Europe. Achievements Apart from a handbook, ebooks, a game, a platform, an app, events, and the workshops, the surveys suggest an: 1. Increased awareness on the issue of gender-based discrimination and stereotypes in young people and educational settings in the UK, Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania. 2. Increased capacity of young people to understand gender stereotypes, discuss them with their peers and act on them. 3. Increased capacity of youth workers, teachers and other professionals in: - Identifying incidents of gender-based discrimination within informal educational settings - Providing support to victims of gender-based discrimination informal educational settings - Preventing gender-based identity from negatively affecting the performance of children and young people 4. Increased awareness on Increased capacities of all participating consortium partners in terms of know-how and state-of-the-art practices for combatting gender-based discrimination in formal educational settings 5. Elevation of the human rights’ dimension within informal educational settings 6. Increased interest of youth workers and other professional in applying the project's youth-led methodology. 7. The development of an international network & European cooperation