EquAlley - About

About the project

What

The EquAlley project is a 24 month school education project funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission with partners from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands and Poland. It sets out to challenge gender stereotypes, social injustice and gender-based violent behaviour, particularly in public spaces, in youngsters. This will be done by promoting and encouraging youngsters to re-think gender roles, norms and stereotypes through a blended-learning course offered in institutions working with youth (schools, youth centers, sports clubs...).

Why

Gender-based violence is one of the most pressing societal issues, with street harassment being a severe and omnipresent problem and manifestation of gender inequality experienced by most girls and women everyday as a result of a foremost structural and social core issue. Therefore, EquAlley is striving to create a free, safe and equal environment for them by tackling the issue with an intervention and prevention approach on school boys and girls. EquAlley will create and exploit a course on gender roles & norms as well as street harassment, a form of sexual violence. Instead of pinpointing potential perpetrators or “victims”, the course turns male individuals into allies and girls into self-efficient actors for reducing discrimination thereby creating an inclusive environment for all genders. Inclusion and diversity in education is thus the central idea of the project. By considering also genderqueer/non-binary pupils in the courses and providing them with participation options to choose from, their inclusion and comfort is being ensured.

How

Through pilot actions and training activities with educators themselves, the EquAlley team will develop highly relevant and valuable resources, supporting and encouraging educators to include these crucial topics in their learning experiences.

Through the creation of an inclusive, blended-learning course and its guide for educators, the EquAlley project aims to qualify educators to support and encourage them to educate about the EquAlley topics. Ultimately, the goal is to:

prevent male individuals from becoming perpetrators while transforming them into male allies;
strengthen female individuals with regards to self-confidence and -efficacy while encouraging them in finding ways to cope with street harassment (and sexual violence in general);
break gender roles, norms & stereotypes for men, women and all genders that usually fall out of the frame, thereby promoting gender sensitive, non-violent and inclusive awareness and attitudes;
enhance exchange among youngsters to decrease stereotypes and discrimination.