Lilia HYRENKO, Head of the Department for Humanitarian, Socio-Cultural Sphere and Education of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council, Head of the NGO WOMEN plus
A modern woman is a strong, purposeful, well-developed personality who understands the clear line between personal and professional, is able to clearly articulate their thoughts and go to the goal, build a successful career and self-development, while remaining always charming, feminine.
Let’s look around. Most Ukrainian women feel confident behind the wheel of cars, do not tolerate violence, do what they like, closely monitor their health, feel as free and young as possible. This is a global trend, which means that gender parity is being established in the world at a rapid pace. Women receive the same rights and opportunities as men, and this shows the maturity of our society. At the same time, unfortunately, in our society there are still many cases of humiliation of people of the opposite sex. Moreover, our social surveys show that many people do not think about gender equality, do not even know what it is.
Issues of gender equality, among other things, belong to the powers of the Department of Humanitarian, Socio-Cultural and Education of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council, and we are actively working in this direction. At the same time, we are aware that we cannot expect support from the state alone. The civic position of each person is extremely important here.
In order to make our activity more active, rich and productive, we united in the public organization WOMEN plus. The organization includes representatives of education and science, health and sports, politics and entrepreneurship at the age of 25+. Our goal is to support women who strive for development, to help them become stronger, more open, to believe in themselves.
We have organized and held a number of gender forums under the general title “Equal rights – great opportunities”. The aim of these events is to involve as many people as possible in activities to establish gender equality in all spheres of our lives, to discuss topical issues of human relations development and ensuring equal rights for men and women.
Together with our members from Dnipropetrovsk University of Internal Affairs, we conducted a gender analysis of a number of regional programs, as a result of which these documents were brought into line with European standards of gender equality.
In cooperation with the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Institute of Public Administration of the National Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine, we have developed a Gender Portrait of the region, which reveals the real gender picture in Dnipropetrovsk region – demographic situation, representation of women in politics, public life, health and education, the state of employment of our compatriots and observance of their rights. This large-scale scientific work allows our public organization to determine the priorities of activities, according to which we organize events.
WOMEN plus is an organization open to all age and gender groups. There are many young people among our members. And although you can often hear that modern youth do not participate in public life, I firmly believe that it is important for young people to feel that they are taken seriously, believed in, listened to. Very briefly in the language of numbers: currently 86.5% of women and 32% of young people work in local governments. The deputies of the regional council are 24 women (20%), and only 2 of them are youth representatives.
I am in favor of giving as many rights and opportunities as possible to young people. A young woman who believes in herself will never allow her rights to be restricted in any way. In this way, we try to instill in young people respect for themselves and for the opposite sex – a kind of gender education.
For the young – the future. Their creativity and innovation allow us to produce new interesting promising ideas. By the way, the brightest projects of our public organization are offered by young members.
We held a competition of videos “Gender Equality”, which was joined by students from different cities of Ukraine. All the footage shows the indifference of young people to gender issues and the importance of our activities.
Currently, the NGO WOMEN Plus operates in three main areas: “Gender and Leadership”, “Healthy Lifestyle” and “Cultural Heritage”.
Among our cases:
– seminars-trainings on women’s leadership and gender issues, during which we teach women to respect themselves as individuals;
– master classes on Petrykivka painting for children from socially vulnerable groups;
– social trainings for young people to promote a healthy lifestyle;
– trainings for women of different ages on their physical and psychological health;
– sports and entertainment activities for families, children and youth;
– art therapy for children with special needs and mothers of fallen soldiers;
– creative competitions for children and women and much more.
There is a lot of work behind each of these events. It is very important for us to feel that we are doing the right thing. Your feedback and your high marks are evidence of this. Thank you, dear compatriots, for your support and anticipation of our new steps.
We have a lot of new interesting ideas, projects and programs ahead of us. We are in constant motion, looking for new approaches, implementing new initiatives.
Believe in yourself! Change, develop, improve yourself! And we will help you with that!
We are open to your ideas! Enjoy reading! And see you soon!
