The meeting of the gender focal points has been organized by Gender Coordination Council created by SDC in 2007. The participants of the meeting included the gender focal points, SDC gender experts, representatives of the village council of Nyzhniy Bystryi, experts of FORZA project and experts of Oblast Forest Administration of Transcarpathia. The UNDP-led Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development Programme implementing sub-project with SDC support in AR Crimea and Vinnytska oblast was represented during the meeting by Ms. Galyna Gulenko, Monitoring and Communication Officer. In April 2008, MGSDP hosted similar visit in Novograd-Volynskyi municipality for sharing practical experience of the Programme in gender mainstreaming.
During the visit, the participants learned the practical experience of the project FORZA – Swiss-Ukrainian project for forest sector development in Trascarpathia – which is the first practical integrated project aimed at forest management, reducing the poverty of local people by using forest resources in a sustainable way, launched in 2003.
In course of the visit, its participants attended village Nyzhniy Bystryi located in picturesque mountainous part of Trascarpathia, where they met the deputies of the village council, owners of the green tourist farms, teachers of the local school and representatives of the village community. In context of FORZA project implementation, the community has developed the strategic Watershed Development Plan and forest management plan for the local forestry, the stream Shyrokyi has been regulated, which was affected by floods of 1998 and 2001 and green village tourism became developed. In addition, heating system has been improved in local school and an experiment with energy saving in households has been conducted.
Based on the field trip, the participants have analyzed the data and practiced project impact assessment with SDC control list (SDC matrix). This table allows assessing project impact in seven areas: quality services access; access and control over income and resources; physical, social and economic mobility; decision-making process and participation; issues of governance, reforms and public administration; time work load; violence free life.
The participants lively discussed the presentations on impact assessment matrix in gender mainstreaming delivered by Mrs. Yaroslava SOROKOPUD, on visual strategies in gender mainstreaming with application of gender caricatures delivered by Mrs. Lyidmyla NESTRYLAY, data collection on distribution of labor among men and woman (“Picture of the Day”) by Mrs. Natalia KOSTYUK and other issues related to gender mainstreaming. Mrs. Olena SUSLOVA, Head of SDC Gender Coordination Council, held a role game on determination of real needs of woman and man “Two Wings”.
The participants got also familiarized with application of visual strategies in gender mainstreaming, discussed SDC gender resource and expressed proposals for future common activities of the gender focal points.
As these guidelines and tools on gender mainstreaming shared in course of this meeting are important for further strengthening democracy and promoting gender equality at local level, MGSDP partner municipalities are requested to learn from this experience and benefit from the available knowledge (training materials are available in the project office). The Programme encourages the partner cities to solicit ideas on further gender mainstreaming of its activities.
For more details, please contact Ms. Galyna Gulenko, Monitoring and Communication Officer of UNDP/MGSDP, by tel. +38 (044) 501 4203 or via e-mail: galyna.gulenko@undp.org.ua.
