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Connect! South East West Women for Development Building Support in New Member States for Gender-sensitive and -responsive European Development Co-operation implemented in years 2009 -2012

KARAT Coalition advocates for inclusion of gender equality and women’s empowerment issues in the states’ development policies and practices through implementation of the projects such as Connect! East – South – West Women for Development.

The project, in its first phase, was implemented by One World Action (UK, the leader),  KARAT Secretariat and KARAT member organizations: Gender Education Research and Technologies (Bulgaria), Association of Equal Opportunities & Gender Studies, O.P.S. (Czech Republic), ‘AUR’ – A.N.S.R.U (Romania) and Slovak Center for Communication and Development (Slovakia). In the second phase KARAT took over a role of the leader.

 

Summary of the project:

Summing up our three-year active implementation of the project, we are glad to announce that:

  • Connect! project has created space for various development policy stakeholders to discuss and get involved for the first time in promoting gender and development issues. Connect! has opened their eyes and ears to this topic.
  • More than 140 women’s organizations, 200 civil society organizations, 25 national decision makers and 13 parliamentarians have benefited from the Connect! project, especially those from 5 EU New Member States (EU NMS: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia).
  • More than 80% of participants who took part in different project’s activities are now committed to gender and development issues and know how to promote gender equality in development policies of their countries.
  • We have built the bridges between women from Africa and Europe by participation of women from Sub-Saharan Africa in the project’s activities and creating space for interactions with the women’s organizations from Eastern Europe.
  • Advocacy on a global level has contributed to global efforts for gender equality and women’s empowerment in development policies and create a space for national advocacy towards decision makers on gender and development issues.

KARAT Coalition together with project partners made a first step towards gender-sensitive and –responsive development policy and practice in EU NMS. Our idea needs to be continued in the follow- up activities, projects and programmes.

We need your help to make this happen! Visit How to get involved.

Within the Connect! project KARAT has published many useful resouces. You can find them HERE