Boys don’t cry…? 1

Hello and Greetings from Nelijärve, where we are at the Training Course “Boys don’t Cry” and we are working on gender issues for our furtjer contribution to mainstream gender in youth work and in our lives.

 

Beginning of the training (day 0 and 1):

We have met with participants on the 3rd of August and had our start with informal ice-breaking, situating ourselves in Nelijärve, getting to know each other and what we are going to do at the training course. During the first evening people were continuously arriving and joining like places of puzzle together until all were at the place.

At the first day, after some necessary official moments, continued with sessions about why we are here and what we would like to achieve. We actually started with “final evaluation” imagining that the week has passed and we are at the last day of the program. The reflection on what we think we are going to bring back with us after the course helped to understand what are our expectations and what we would like to get from the program.

We put all the results on the program, as well adding all the workshops and presentations, that participants brought with them, because this training was though as space for sharing what we are already doing and what already works well and thinking how it may help and be adapted by our colleagues and organizations in youth work. The program in this way was completed.

All the afternoon was dedicated to sharing our local realities through exploring “what it means to be a woman and man” in our communities. It was done in subgroups and through collage visual presentation. We had a lot to tell each other and see if there are differences and similarities between our contexts – it was full of learning about traditions, gender roles and stereotypes, positive developments in gender mainstreaming and much about challenges which exist in Estonia, Turkey, Lithuania, Spain, Italy, Romania, Belorussia, Armenia and Georgia to gender equality.

After dinner we, of course, had our first party together the Euro-Gender evening and it was the space to share tasty things, which participants brought with them. But the most important was that we wanted to share with each other parts of our cultures, which say about how men and women live and relate. Many great moments happened that evening: Georgian and Romanian dances, singing in Italian and analyzing the content of the song, Turkish modern dance and song as well was analyzed, Estonian epos about Kalevipoeg was shortly presented with gender analyze of its characters etc. The night finished with games at the lakeside.

 

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