Rede is a young women led youth organization, being gender mainstreaming in youth policies one of our main goals. For the youth sector to effectively implement a gender-sensitive strategy it is necessary that young women have the proper education, training and mentorship, so that they can fully develop their skills and competences and take on leadership roles. This is the reason why the project “De Mulher para Mulher 4- dMpM” (translated as “Women for Women 4) is one of our recurring projects and it is already in its fourth edition.
“De Mulher para Mulher” is a feminist mentorship project, bringing together in pairs 30 young women (aged between 17-30) and their more experienced female mentors. Working with young women allows us to have access to a privileged context in contact with youth, guided by diverse views on the themes inherent to Women’s rights and Equality between women and men. Young women care and want to be part of the fight for social justice and decision-making, conscious that these decisions will have a huge impact not only on their present but also on their future. Inspired by their own communities and experiences, each of these young women creates an intervention project to work with other people and organizations in order to be part of the response against inequalities that affect the lives of many women, including themselves.
In order to achieve this they rely on the support of dMpM’s team and their mentor, a woman with experience in the area they want to explore. So far we have many fields of intervention: arts, music, social engagement, activism, law, etc. REDE’s role has been motivate these young women to do their best and to think in depth about the goals they want to reach and the problems they are trying to tackle, always ensuring the individual character of each project. At the same time, REDE’S team sets up partnerships between organizations, inviting them to our activities to spread awareness about women’s human rights and promote gender mainstreaming.
When we talk about work with young women nowadays, we cannot let go of the fact that we live in an age of technology. Their social media engagement is a determining factor in our way to reach them and to promote consciousness about their active participation as fundamental for social changes. Among other things, we’ve been launching a collaborative online newsletter, encouraging the project’s participants to write their texts, giving their opinions and sharing their thoughts and experiences. They often write about their feelings showing off their beliefs, emotions and motivations about the subjects they’re exploring, always about Women’s Rights issues. By doing this, we managed to create a way for them to share their perspectives with their friends and family and through their social media. Some of them found their voices and discovered they have something to say, but many of them just didn’t know how. Every now and then, they choose a more difficult theme and we encourage them to do a small research on the subject before they start to write.
We organize training actions designed to enrich the knowledge of the project’s participants on women’s human rights, gender mainstreaming and associativism. We also prepare sessions on how to develop an intervention project in order to give them tools to work with. Preparing these actions is something challenging since we’re trying to give appropriate answers to participants’ needs and expectations which can be really different when dealing with 30 young women from different ages, cities, social backgrounds and interests.
Along with all this, we’ve been trying to disseminate messages that we consider important: how to be conscious about human trafficking and its connection to prostituition, how to be an activist for Human Rights, specifically with girls and women, how to be a young female leader, among others. We’ve been organizing open sessions online with some key-speakers who address the different thematics from their professional and personal point of view. With these initiatives we’re trying to get other young women involved, talking about problems that still exist in our society, while bringing new glances to start the conversation. For us, this is important since we figured that our young participants like to have spaces where they can debate, share ideas and points of view and create networks with other people who share the same visions.
Youth work has been on the European agenda for a very long time because it’s a vehicle to promote gender equality and to put an end to sex-based discrimination. Young women are interested in taking their future into their own hands, working to see the changes they believe are needed. They’re nonconforming, they’re active, they want to be heard. By working with them we are creating spaces for them to do so, to fight for their beliefs, to participate as responsible citizens.
Youth work is shaping our future and we are seeing this with our project- they’re young women, some of them are now finishing school and applying to university, but although they’re still young and recognize there’s still so many things for them to learn and so much room left to grow, they have something to say and they can contribute to the feminist movement. They have already experienced some of the sex-based discrimination in their short lives, they saw the tremendous impact this discrimination has in women’s and girls’ lives, how it puts barriers to girls and women’s public and political engagement, and they don’t want to condone this. So they’re bringing new and fresh ideas. They’re concerned about homeless women, female artists, objectification, sexual abuse, violence, female empowerment, economic issues, even with patriarchal symbols that represent our cities. Some of these things were never even spoken in our meetings and they’re making this happen. They are starting conversations about many controversial subjects and they aren’t afraid of calling out for action.
In a project like “De Mulher para Mulher” it is easy to see how wonderful it is to work with young women who bring youth approaches to dealing with sex-based discrimination, raising awareness towards a feminist society .
Projeto "De Mulher para Mulher" 