GIRLS AND WOMEN CONNECTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS

The objective of the roundtable discussions is to exchange ideas and best practices on how to foster girls' and young women's sense of initiative for environmental action and improve their active citizenship skills and social innovation mindsets. Ultimately, the aim is to create synergies and open up opportunities for collaboration among the participants.

What you'll gain?

• Brainstorm with experts and practitioners on key strategies promoting greater participation of girls and young women in strategic, innovative ESTEAM (Entrepreneurship & Arts powered by STEM) sectors.

• Gain insight into the experiences and lessons learned by other organizations and stakeholders and take these best practices back to your community.

• Find opportunities of collaboration with a wide network of similar organizations.

What is the format of the roundtable discussions?

There will be four discussion tables set-up, each covering a topic (explained below). Participants can chose the tables they want to join for a 30 minutes discussion, and share their knowledge and suggestions on how to empower girls and young women as changemakers in our society. Participants are encouraged to be as specific as possible, to raise issues that arise in their day-today activities, and actionable ideas for better paths forwards. A follow-up session will present the main takeaways from the roundtable discussions.

Key outcomes

• Following the event, we will gather the key insights in a Recommendations Paper and share it with all participants and stakeholders in our network.

• Engage and connect community members to collaborate for future initiatives for the benefit of girls and women.

• Opportunities for networking with like-minded professionals.

Discussion topics

TOPIC 1: Skills development for youth towards the Digital and Green transformations

Questions to consider: as civil society organizations and providers of non-formal education, how can we ensure young people gain a swift access to the requisite skills to enable them to be part of the solutions and to navigate the social, economic, and environmental challenges the world faces? What kind of skills and knowledge should we focus on? And how to include the gender lens in this process?

TOPIC 2: Gender mainstreaming in youth strategies

Questions to consider: What are the main challenges and opportunities of gender mainstreaming? How to strengthen the dialogue between civil society and policy makers to integrate gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, regulatory measures and spending programmes?

TOPIC 3: Best practices for impact: Youth - Gender inclusion - Environmental action

Questions to consider: What actionable ways to build gender equality and sustainability? What are the practices and tools you identified in your activities to improve the capabilities of civil society organizations for supporting more effectively their target groups and increase their impact?

TOPIC 4: Opportunities for cooperation for organizations working on youth, gender and environmental topics

Questions to consider: what are the needs of civil society organizations in terms of skills development, engagement capabilities or funding? what opportunities for collaboration are there and how to ensure they are accessible for all stakeholders?