The overall objective is to protect and empower vulnerable young women and enhance gender equality in the southern Kyrgyzstan, by ensuring an enabling environment for economic empowerment of vulnerable young women through their integration in innovative and creative industries sectors.
Target groups include young women aged between 18-35 encompassing the following vulnerable groups:
- Unemployed women and/or women with a low education level who enter the labour market for the first time without a prior vocational training
- Victims of violence against women
- Single mothers, mothers with many children representing ethnic minorities (Uzbek, Tajik and others)
- Women with disabilities • Women with many children and/or being on maternity leave
- Mothers with infants or pre-school children with no ability to travel outside the village due to marital status and/or childcare reasons • Women from poor households registered at aiyl okmotu (LSGB) and/or public employment centres repatriated from Syria and Iraq under measures of specific state programme
- Girls from madrasas (religious schools) and women from isolated religious communities in need of employment
- Rural women in difficult life situations
Main activities
- Capacity building: training/ coaching/ mentorship/ best practice sharing/ institutional building and networking
- Supporting ten start-up projects in creative industry (handicrafts, arts and crafts, tour guides, tourist entertainment, tourism route development)
- Providing marketing & PR support (certification of Sedep products such as souvenirs, tourism services and tour products); handicraft festivals, tourism forums, fairs, ethno-shows, and promotion of successful stories of young women as innovators and changemakers
- Legal capacity building and awareness-raising: legal training programme to enable target groups to monitor the implementation of international, national, and local policies on gender equality, legal and economic empowerment of women, subject-matter sectoral frameworks and local social-economic development programmes.
- Civil society monitoring: revealing existing gaps and restrictions in legislations and their implementation that hinder development of women’s social entrepreneurship incl. their integration in creative industry sector and legal and economic empowerment of women, preparation of analytical reports and policy briefs with relevant recommendations.
- Advocacy: initiating sessions to build dialogue between target groups and private sector to accelerate women employment, innovations, digital entrepreneurship, and nurture creative ecosystem; public and budget hearings focused on economic and legal empowerment of women and enhancement of gender equality; and advocacy activities for addressing the gaps in implementation of gender-related local/national policies and international commitments.
Duration: 01/03/2024 – 31/08/2026 (30 months)
Location/s: Kyrgyzstan (10 pilot locations incl. 3 towns and 7 ayil aimaks (AA) from Osh region (Osh town, Kyrgyz-Ata AA (Nookat rayon), Halle–Anarov AA (Aravan rayon); Djalal-Abad region: Djalal-Abad town, Sary-Bulun AA (Toguz-Toro rayon), Ketmen-Tobo AA (Toktogul rayon), Arstanbap AA (Bazar-Korgon rayon). Suzak AA (Suzak rayon); Batken region: Kyzyl-Kiya town, Kulundu AA (Leilek rayon).
Implementing Partners
Women’s Peace Bank (Osh, Kyrgyzstan)
Pro NGO! e. V. (Koeln, Germany)
Further information
instagram.com/womens.peace.bank
facebook.com/pfwomenspeacebank
Contacts:
Hans Born, Chairman
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Begayim Sharsheeva, Project Coordinator
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