Winners of AUC call for short-term gender initiatives announced

 

On June 22-23, 2017 in Kyiv, the results of AUC’s call for short-term gender initiatives were announced, with the winners being awarded certificates by PLEDDG Project Director during a meeting of the Section on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men of the Association of Ukrainian Cities (AUC).

In the spring of 2017, AUC jointly with PLEDDG Project announced a call for short-term gender initiatives, which will enhance women’s involvement in local economic development processes. The total budget of the funding within the call is worth UAH 600,000.00. A specially created committee selected 8 projects out of 38 projects received, which will be launched as early as July 2017. The winning projects are aimed at facilitating women’s entrepreneurship, providing training on branding, promoting products manufactured by women entrepreneurs, and setting up online platforms for communication and sales. Some of the selected projects involve conducting a gender analysis and developing gender maps that will provide the basis for target programs and strategies to ensure and maintain gender equality in the economic life of communities. The selected projects will be implemented in Ukrainian cities and towns such as Rivne, Pershotravensk, Tarashcha, Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Severodonetsk, Irpin, and Vinnytsia.

The meeting of the AUC’s Section on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men started with opening remarks from AUC Executive Director Valeriy Baranov. Mr. Baranov stressed the importance of achieving gender equality in all spheres of public life in Ukraine, saying that gender equality issues were an integral part of Ukraine’s democratic development. The meeting participants were also greeted by Liudmyla Dromashko, Chairwomen of the AUC’s Section on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men and Pershotravensk City Mayor, Oleksandr Kucherenko, PLEDDG Project Director, and Kadie Ward, Senior Governance Advisor to PLEDDG Project.

After a welcome address, PLEDDG Director Oleksandr Kucherenko announced the winners of the call and presented them with award certificates. Presentation of all the winning projects then followed.

• Winners of the call for short-term gender initiatives are as follows:
• NGO European Assembly of Women Deputies (Irpin, Kyiv Oblast);
• NGO Dnipropetrovsk Institute of Municipal Management (Pershotravensk, Dnipro Oblast);
• NGO People’s Help to Ukraine (Chernivtsi);
• NGO Center of Municipal and Regional Development – Resource Center (Ivano-Frankivsk);
• NGO Women of Luhansk Region (Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast);
• NGO Information and Training Center for Civic Initiatives (Tarashcha, Kyiv Oblast);
• NGO “Prostir” Interaction Platform (Rivne)
• Vinnytsia Association of Regional NGOs Open Society (Vinnytsia).

Following the presentation of the winning projects, Olena Tykhomyrova, Gender Equality Advisor to PLEDDG Project, presented a AUC Gender Code and proposed that participants discuss its content and use.

The second day of the meeting was dedicated to the fundamentals of gender budgeting – an effective tool to achieve gender equality and make the use of budget funds more efficient. Svitlana Garashchenko and Oksana Tsiupa, national experts of the SIDA-funded Gender Budgeting in Ukraine Project, presented the results of a recent gender budget analysis of local programs.