From the 5th to the 7th of April WIDE along with seven organizations – Young Women’s Christian Association Beirut, Gyumri «Youth Initiative Centre», D’Antilles et D’Ailleurs, Fundacion Cibervoluntarios, Foundation for Socio-economic Development787, Digital Leaders Institute, Ticket2Europe – drove the second mobility of Gender 2.0 in Beirut, as a follow up to the one held in Luxembourg.
During this mobility twenty-three participants – both females and males – shared, discussed, learnt and tried to understand different topics.
During the first day foreign attendees, thanks to the enormous amount of information given by local participants, tried to picture the country, defining its immigrational and emigrational, academic, religious, working and prospective situation.
One of the main developed topics has been the conditions of the migrants in the region and how do different cultures cohabit the country.
People tried to understand the Syrian and Palestinian refugees living situation, as a large part of the actual population, workers, students and part of the Lebanese society itself.
Lately, all other participants gave a picture of the situation in their countries about the difficulties migrants face in accessing different layers of the society -e.g. culture, education, financial support and working environment- trying to figure out how can technology be used to solve those issues.
In addition, participants got awareness about blockchain, gender gap and feminine entrepreneurship.
The second day of the mobility has been spent in Byblos, one of the oldest cities of the world.
Besides visiting the local branch of YWCA, participants visited the place itself, getting in touch with both the local environment and its food culture and got to know better each other.
During the last day, all participants took part to an Erasmus+ Project Lab, discussing and designing new possible activities and partnerships about different ideas, such as women entrepreneurship and inclusion of vulnerable women.
To sum up, one of the main outcomes of this exchange has been seeing, doing, making and discovering with the purpose of learning and gaining cultural awareness, while trying to use and invest in networking, for making changes and doing something for our future.
Fist of all, thanks to Rima and all the YWCA – Young Women’s Christian Association Beirut for their unevaluable and fundamental logistical and touristic support and of course, for providing the best location for this exchange.
We would also like to thank all the participants for their active participation and natural interest.
Last but not least, we thank Erasmus+ of the European Commission for co-founding the project.
