UN Women Ethiopia in collaboration with National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) has organized BRIDGE workshop for NEBE’s Voter Education Experts and UNV’s supporting NEBE’s voter education interventions, members of the women’s political empowerment training curriculum development committee from Bahir Dar University and CSOs working in the field of voter education. The workshop aimed to increase participant’s awareness on women participation in electoral processes and enhance capacities of to ensure gender inclusive voter education.
The workshop was led online by Shalva Tskhakaia and Natia Kashakashvili and held with combined modality during 17-19 February, 2021 in Addis Ababa. In total 22 participants representing NEBE (7), UNVs working with NEBE regional offices (6), Civil Society Organizations (4) and Academia (5) attended the workshop; amongst the participants 17 were men and 5 women It’s important to mention the UN Women colleagues/facilitators’ (Cherer Aklilu and Rediet Yaschalew) continuous support and hard work in ensuring the friendly atmosphere as well as organizing the participants’ interaction at the training room. UN Women facilitators were very responsive to the needs of the BRIDGE facilitators and overall the smooth communication led to the very harmonized facilitation.
During the workshops, participants have gained the knowledge about international standards and best practices for ensuring equal rights for men and women in electoral process; participants have analyzed various obstacles that are faced by women as voters, candidates and as election officials and examined interventions to address inequalities throughout the Electoral Cycle as well as within the organization. Participants were also explained the systematic barriers such as the impact of Electoral Systems on women representation and the importance of designing gender quota wisely. The workshop last sessions focused participants on “make it happen” and developed gender-inclusive 100-day plan.
Participants have shown immense interest in the topic and enjoyed using of the online training tools (mentimeter, google forms, google docs, and online flipcharts). In order to ensure participants’ understanding of the topic while considering the time limits, facilitators had to adapt session delivery approaches on the go, in some cases replacing active learning with the passive methods.
Participants have praised the professionalism of the facilitators and the ability to fully engage participants regardless of the modality. Participants have expressed their opinion about the conduct and content of the workshop through the evaluation forms (conducted in written and verbal format):
Overall, the modality of the BRIDGE workshop provided worthy level of interactivity and participants’ ability to develop new knowledge and skills, while the facilitators’ ability to interact with participants during the group work stayed the main challenge.
At the end of the workshop, participants were granted certificates with the electronic signatures of the facilitators.
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