Yorkton Councillor Randy Goulden recently made a trip to Ukraine.
The trip was under the auspices of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
It was her third trip through a program focused on promoting gender equality in municipal politics in Ukraine, in particular building capacity for women to be more involved.
Goulden said there was also an economic element.
The programming was through PLEDDG and Gender Equality Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance Project (PLEDDG) which is a six-year technical assistance project implemented by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and financed by Global Affairs Canada. “The project aims to strengthen Ukraine’s municipal sector by increasing capacities in 16 Ukrainian cities to advance local democracy and economic development. The Project will strengthen local democracy through implementing an open government model and ensuring transparent and effective decision making by local government, create enabling conditions for the creation and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, with a focus on women entrepreneurs, facilitate decentralization of authorities and integrated development planning at the local, regional and national levels. PLEDDG will also promote green municipal environment for Ukrainian cities, trade and investment between Canada and Ukraine and contribute to Canada-Poland coordinated engagement with Ukraine. PLEDDG integrates gender equality as a cross-cutting theme (Gender Equality in PLEDDG),” notes material shared by Goulden.
The primary areas of attention are:
• Building the gender analysis skills of PLEDDG staff and partners (ensuring basic knowledge of gender analysis and stressing the relevance of this analysis to local economic development, SMEs, and local democratic governance. This capacity is addressed in a cumulative fashion throughout the life of the project)
• Raising basic awareness among partners on the relevance, scope and details of gender equality issues/gender analysis in local economic development (incorporating modules, case studies, examples, etc. on gender equality into all training, briefing materials, and discussions)
• Focusing on women entrepreneurs in small and medium enterprise initiatives (strengthening effectiveness of local governments to support the development of SMEs with a focus on women entrepreneurs and improving the capacity of partner cities to create favourable enabling environments for women entrepreneurs)
• Supporting a committed group of local gender equality experts/activists - Committee on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men of the Association of Ukrainian Cities (including two meetings per year, conducting calls for proposals for gender equality initiatives in the cities and further dissemination of results)
