After the brilliantly successful experience in empowering Baalbeck-Hermel women in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in “Empowering Women to Lead” (EWL) project, LOST has launched its new project EWL-2 with the aim of widening the range of capacitated women and putting them into round tables to discuss public issues with their men counterparts.
Women in such a conflict-prone conservative community are performing a wide array of diverse roles and responsibilities. Occupying a central position in the traditional family environment, being both mothers and teachers for the children, they are seeking independence to access participation in public life in leading positions.
Believing that women’s education and empowerment is the best recipe to present women as active partners in public life, LOST will empower 240 men and women who hold public functions or have roles that allow them to participate in decision making from 8 rural areas in Baalbek-Hermel with the knowledge and skills needed for participation in the decision making process at the local level. The trainees will end up capable of lobbying decisions, creating support groups, establishing new projects or designing women-protection-based campaigns.
The project is also designed to promote a new culture in which women in leading positions (WLP) and men in leading positions (MLP) sit to round tables and design gender-sensitive decisions. Women in public positions in municipalities, principals, MOSA, and NGOs, added to the women participating in municipal committees are intended to feel supported pertaining to their skills, presence, and efficiency. The project will also develop the local democratic culture by increasing local participation of all arrays of society.
EWL-2 is now running in its training phase, LOST is committed to achieve the best for the trainees and the community, and GIZ is supporting in all possible ways to guarantee a successful experience in the new project.