The Center for Civil Society and Democracy in Syria has conducted the fourth workshop in The Women for the Future of Syria project under the name of “Syrian Women… Advocacy… Civil Peace”.
The workshop was held Gaziantep, Turkey from the 4th through the 8th of May 2013, and was sponsored by The Women Democracy Network (WDN) and conducted by trainers from The Institute for Inclusive Security (ISI).
Twelve participants attended the workshop, coming from a variety of regions in Syria including; Damascus and its suburbs, Al-Sweida, Al-Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama and Al-Hasakeh. The women were trained in advocacy and civil peace, and the trainers focused on these two topics in order to help rehabilitate the women by improving their self-confidence and their confidence in their potentials in order to get them more involved in politics, peace-building and decision-making. The vision of the project is focused on women becoming key players in the current situation, especially regarding peace advocacy campaigns and campaigns working to stop the violence in Syria.
The trainers used presentations and activities as training mechanisms instead of lectures.
During the workshop, the movie “Let’s Pray the Devil Back to Hell” was shown. This movie is about the armed conflict in Liberia and the advocacy campaign that Liberian women undertook to stop the fighting. The campaign ultimately led to the resignation of the president and a women took the lead afterwards.
There was an interactive atmosphere between participants with different intellectual and social backgrounds during and after the time of training, fostered by the trainers’ efforts to constantly push the participants to work in different groups during each activity.
This atmosphere motivated both the trainers and the participants to put forward their best efforts.On the last day of the workshop , the participants expressed their satisfaction with the training , the experiences and the knowledge acquired.
They showed great enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge with other women inside Syria andto work with them. One of the participants said: “The spirit of teamwork between the organizing team was very inspirational and it got everyone’s attention.”
Another participant remarked: “The methods used to deliver the ideas, whether activities or discussions among the participants really helped us to understand each other more.”
Center For Civil Society And Democray In Syria