TWINNING PROJECT PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITYThe 1st Component entitled Twinning Project "Promoting Gender Equality" has been prepared as a Twinning project. Twinning presents a general framework so as to strengthen relations between public institutions of candidate countries and member states of the EU. Twinning projects aim to help the candidate countries in the development of efficient administrations with the structures, human resources and management skills needed to implement the acquis communautaire to the same standards as Member States. Together they develop and implement a project that targets the transposition, enforcement and implementation of a specific part of the acquis communautaire. The Twinning project "Promoting Gender Equality", implemented jointly by the Prime Ministry, General Directorate on the Status of Women and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment of the Netherlands was launched in March 2007 and it will be completed in November 2008. Aims of the Project are:
The project activities, carried out under six components, are as follows: COMPONENT 1: Under Component 1 of the project, which aims at strengthening the institutional capacity of the General Directorate, KSGM staff will receive trainings on organizational development, internal and external communication, project management, gender equality, EU acquis and EU policies. COMPONENT 2: Under the scope of Component 2, first of all interviews were made by Dutch experts with internal and external users. Furthermore, Dutch experts organised a workshop for a group consisting of staff of KSGM involved in the component and one assistant expert from each department of KSGM. In this workshop Dutch experts conveyed experiences of Dutch government concerning use of the Web site and shared their knowledge on a documentation centre serving to public in the Netherlands. In the workshop group discussions were held on the current situation of KSGM's documentation centre and web site and how they should be in the future. In addition to this, a draft report entitled "Analysis, evaluation & recommendations to strengthen the documentation centre and improving the website" was prepared. COMPONENT 3: Under Component 3, a draft model will be designed for a Gender Equality Body. To this end, an inter-ministerial working group consisting of representatives from the Ministry of Justice, Presidency of Human Rights, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Education was formed. The inter-ministerial working group, meeting at certain intervals and working on the draft model, will continue its activities till May 2008. The first meeting of the group was held in April 2007 under presidency of the Dutch and Turkish component leaders. After that, STEs organised a training seminar in May 2007 so as to present more information on the amongst other subjects, the requirements of the acquis. On 25 June 2007, a National Seminar was held with participation of representatives from NGOs, universities, bar associations and public institutions. The second working group meeting was organised on 26 June 2007 in order to evaluate the information received during the National Seminar and to use it effectively for .the studies of the working group. Moreover, there will be a study tour to Equality Bodies of three EU-countries. It is planned that there will be an internship in the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission between 19-30 November with participation of one staff member from Ministry of Justice and one staff member from KSGM to examine the Dutch model. COMPONENT 4 Under Component 4, a Mapping Exercise and a Gender mainstreaming Policy Report were prepared under the scope of activities concerning designing a Draft National Action Plan. Under the scope of the Mapping Exercise, in total 62 interviews were made with public institutions and organizations and NGOs in various provinces. The "Mapping Exercise Report" was prepared after interviews with relevant stakeholders. Activities for forming working groups and preparing polices documents for the preparation of the draft of the National Action Plan are ongoing. Six working group meetings will be organised on 16 and 22 October 2007. In these meetings 10 main critical areas of concern from Being Platform for Action will be addressed. COMPONENT 5 Development of 2 Communication Strategies is foreseen under this component. One of them is the Communication Strategy of the General Directorate on the Status of Women and the other one is a Communication Plan for the National Action Plan. Within this framework, a general presentation was made to the KSGM staff involved in the component on how to prepare a communication strategy and the Coordination Committee was discussed. A draft report, intended to serve as a preparatory study for the development of a communication strategy, was drawn up. Meetings of the Coordination Committee are planned for the 24th of September and October or November 2007. The Communication Plan for the National Action Plan will be developed following activities concerning the preparation of the National Action Plan. COMPONENT 6 Under the scope of Component 6, training programs and training material have been developed to achieve that related decision makers, experts and policy makers become fully aware of the relevant acquis, importance of gender equality and gender mainstreaming Under the program, a trainer's pool of 100 trainers will be created and trainings will be organised for 50 top level decision makers, 150 policy experts from public institutions and 500 representatives from public institutions, local administrations and NGOs. For the trainer's pool of trainers, five groups of 20 (5 x 20 = 100) trainers will be trained. Till now, trainings of 60 trainers have been completed (in June-July 2007). Training of policy experts, planned to start in October 2007, will continue till the end of December. Seminars for top level decision-makers (mayors and representatives of ministries) will be in October 2007. |
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