In 2005 Center of Women’s Studies and Policies conducted four planned 2-day trainings on Gender Mainstreaming in the towns of Pravets, Veliko Turnovo, Stara Zagora and Varna as well as one additional training in Sofia (see the schedule below).

They were implemented with three local partner organizations and each of them was engaged with the selection of the participants and the organization of one seminar. The five trainings were attended by 81 participants of which 20 representatives of the Bulgarian Association of Regional Development Agencies (BARDA), 20 – of the Women’s Union to the Confederation of Labor “Podkrepa” (WUPCL), 16 – of the Committee on women’s participation in local governance to the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria (NAMRB). There were also 25 representatives of local NGOs.

The objective of the training’s programs was to raise the awareness and knowledge of gender mainstreaming issues and to empower the trainees with practical tools for mainstreaming gender into their programs and policies. To this aim the trainings were focused both on theoretical issues and practical application of gender mainstreaming. The training program was based on the manual, developed by the Romanian partner and adapted by the CWSP experts, who also developed practical exercises, cases and examples from Bulgarian reality.  The trainers were Pobeda Loukanova, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Economics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and expert of Club “Ikonomika 2000”, and the experts from the CWSP – Tatyana Kmetova, Magdanela Delinesheva, Liliya Sazonova and Darya Ivanova.

At the end of each seminar the participants gave their evaluation and comments. The main recommendations are to conduct this training for a broader group of representatives of the partner organizations using this methodology and materials in order to raise their capacity in the topic. The participants consider that further more detailed training is necessary to build upon the knowledge gained and that more men should be involved. They also think that specialized modules in gender mainstreaming designed for employers should be developed.

In order to popularize the project in the local communities before each of the trainings press releases were prepared and broadly disseminated among the electronic and printed media in the particular region. In some of the towns interviews were given to local journalists. The press releases and additional information about the project was posted on the CWSP’s and local partner’s sites. Furthermore, the project was promoted in the electronic newsletter issued by the CWSP.