Gender Sensitization among Young People in Egypt (Phase II)

This project started in 2018 and lasted for 6 months as an experimental stage, then it was resumed again in January 2019 and continued till December 2019. The project mainly aimed to combat gender-based violence among adolescents by creating a training manual explaining the concepts and definitions of violence and its effects on the adolescents’ psychological and physical health, in addition to other topics such as early marriage, sexual harassment, FGM, discrimination based on gender and many other issues. This project was implemented, in its experimental phase, in Assiut, Portsaid and Sohag.

In 2018, the number of training recipients reached 95, while in 2019 the number reached 266 trainees, including teachers, psychologists, social workers, maids and servants in churches in the governorates of both Cairo and Minya.

In addition to these, teachers and facilitators from the Syrian community in Egypt also participated in the training who then used the guide along with 224 adolescents in 2019 while in 2018 were 265 adolescents.

The launched guide by “Tadwein for Gender Studies” aims to provide adolescents with correct and accurate concepts of the values of gender equality, thus contributing to changing stereotypes regarding female and male roles in society. The guide also aims to help adolescents to understand themselves and to gain more knowledge about their psychological and sexual health.

Through this guide, “Tadwein” seeks to create an educational model that will be as a guiding tool for teachers and for everyone who deals with young men and women in their early adolescence stage, through interactive exercises that add fun to the learning process, and support them with important terms and definitions as well as reveal the daily situations that shows the presence of gender inequality.

This guide has special importance due to the lack of educational materials in school curricula, related to the values of gender equality and the foundations regarding dealing correctly with that critical age and the curricula also do not include materials that address female and male social roles from a gender-sensitive perspective that support equality and empowerment.

During the second phase, the project was implemented in Cairo, Giza, Qena, Assiut, Alexandria, Portsaid, Sohag, Menia and Beni-Suef. This project targets teachers, social workers in schools and civil society workers who work/ deal with adolescents. The outcomes of this project were publicized at the “Towards an Effective Change in the Perceptions of Gender Among Adolescents” on January 28^th, 2020.