North Macedonia follow up

After the project in Klodsko,Poland in July, we as team had many discussions and different opinions on how to do the Follow-up activity. In August we (Alex and Dragana) recieved an invitation to participate in an Erasmus Youth Outdoor Event in Valandovo,Macedonia.

So we got an idea and decided to split the Follow-up activity in two parts.

The first part was using the same event ,called Outdoor Festival- Experiencing cooperation, on the date of 02-September-2023 ,and the other part was a simple dissemination activity took place in Skopje with 6 young students.

So the event ,took place in Valandovo,Macedonia, with young people and youth workers aged 16-21. The young people were like 20-35 from Macedonia and Greece , as the event was actually to connect the two countries together though out the youth.

As the Event had different schedule we used the opportunity to present everyone with details about Erasmus+ programme and ours experiences through it. After that, in a hiking trip together we explained and presented to them the ,,Women's empowerment'' project and what was indicated and the feelings we had gathered. We asked them to mention or tell us some different stories,reasons and differences in the women and men similarities.

After that,we also asked them to describe how women were also treated in Greece and Macedonia and if there is actually any discrimination and differences between men and women. As usual we noticed noticed was a challenge emotionally for men to express themselves and to describe feminity.

As for the second part of the dissemination , we did a simple activity (well not so simple) , which took place on 07-October,2023 in the Student Dormitory ,,Goce Delchev"in Skopje with 5 young students.

We also represented and explained to them the meaning of the Erasmus programe, and why we decided to join it. After that we presented our last project , or Training Course ,,Women Empowerment" (which you know it) and what actually we learned and experienced from it.

We also asked the about different opinions about women and men, about sex and gender (becouse most of us were medical students 😀 😀) . We also shared different stories and cases about abusing and discriminating women in our current society , where we actually realised we need to fight and change it for the future generations.

Yeah we think we did pretty good with this. So thats all. Thanks again for the wonderful memories and education ext.

Evaluation Paragraph of our participants

Aleksandar Zlatkov Tsekov

Hello,Alex here ! In the dates between 22nd til 27th of July 2023, i had an amazing oportunity and pleasure to attend an ERASMUS KA153YOU Training Course ,on Topic : WOMENS EMPOWERMENT – ACTION TO CLOSE GENDER GAP WITH NON-FORMAL EDUCATION (WOMENS POWER) . Wow,it was just amazing !! Before the project , i had only common knowledge and info related to women's rights and the problem related to equality. I couldn't even relate anything to the topic of women's empowerment completely. So yeah, I had the oportunity to attend this project in Stronie Slaskie,Klodsko , Poland where our amazing hosts from NGO OPEN SOUL -Poland and NGO ACPELIA -Cyprus prepared and led the project. The whole course was incredibly informative, and every day I learned new things and examples which provided valuable insights for addressing gender inequality in the world, and even to see and feel the real problem from it. By every session we had I got just more knowledge and more interested in the topic. So overal I am glad that I made the right decision to join the project as a participant or even a Youth Worker. I would personaly recommend to anyone to join these kind topic related projects.

Dragana Zanova

Hi there, I'am Dragana. I got and invitation by dear friend , Nikolas from Acpelia to participate in the project. The week of training was very intense, very challenging emotionally as I have experienced personally most situations mentioned in the training. I loved sharing and connecting with many participants and national groups. I personally had a lot of reflections and adapted some of the activities, games in the follow-up activity as well. The project could have been a few days longer, with shorter schedules(as ia prefer to hang out more as usual) but the topics were very intense and need time to absorb them. Thank you for all team efforts, for the many tasks and great talks after the training. As in every training, I value diversity, differences of opinions and ideas that I bring home as an expirience for my futre plans.

Nina Angelkova

Hi, I'am Nina. I am from Gevgelija , Macedonia. It was a great experience to meet like-minded people from different cultures and different backgrounds. What is more, it was of immense value to discuss and share our opinions on such a sensitive topic. In my opinion, the greatest benefit of such trainings is that you don't need to pretend as if all of us are in our own way unique, brave, but at the same time very sensitive people , or to say we as women. I enjoyed all the moments of sharing experiences, sympathy and advice. The topic of the training itself is very sensitive but, I dear to say,I do realize that many women still suffer violent men abuse, experience emotional abuse of controlling, shaming, blaming, and purposely humiliating. Therefore, voicing such cases is simply more than necessary. to say we must empower ourselfs as women to stay strong.

Simona Zdravkovska

I'm Simona and I'm excited to share with you an extraordinary experience I had from July 22nd to July 27th, 2023. During this time, I had the incredible opportunity and pleasure of participating in an ERASMUS KA153YOU Training Course focused on "Women's Empowerment – Action to Close the Gender Gap with Non-Formal Education" (WOMEN'S POWER).
To be honest, before embarking on this project, my knowledge about women's rights and gender equality was rather limited and somewhat superficial. Even though I had my own persona l experiences, my personal research and thoughts on this topic, because I think and feel very passionately about it, this project brought up so many new things, thoughts and I learned and grew so much. This project, took place in the picturesque town of Stronie Slaskie, Klodsko, Poland, under the guidance of our amazing hosts from two outstanding organizations: NGO OPEN SOUL in Poland and NGO ACPELIA in Cyprus.
Each day brought fresh insights and practical examples that not only deepened my understanding of gender inequality but also allowed me to witness and empathize with the very real challenges women face worldwide.
These initiatives have the power to change not only your perspective but also the world's outlook on gender equality and women's empowerment. It's a journey worth embarking on, one that I am immensely grateful for, and one that I encourage others to undertake as well.