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Elevate, Protect, Transform: Advancing Gender Justice for Women and Girls in Lebanon
Project
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Project start date
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Status
Ongoing
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Project end date
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Project duration
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3 years
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AFD financing amount
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€ 500 000
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Global financing amount
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€ 555 000
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Country and region
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Location
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Beirut, Mount Lebanon (Chouf), North (Tripoli), Bekaa (Zahle), South Lebanon
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Type of financing
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Beneficiaries
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FEMALE
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Type of beneficiary
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CSO
Lebanon’s ongoing crises, including the 2024 conflict, have intensified vulnerabilities for women and girls, especially the displaced. With destroyed safe spaces and limited access to health, protection, and education services, GBV risks have increased. Marginalized groups face greater exclusion, while systemic barriers hinder women’s representation. FEMALE’s project targets young women in crisis-affected areas, promoting leadership, resilience, and empowerment through safe spaces, advocacy, and community engagement to challenge gender norms and drive social change.
Description
This three-year project addresses the multifaceted crises in Lebanon that have disproportionately affected vulnerable women and girls. These crises have exacerbated gender-based violence, limited women and girls’ access opportunities to safe spaces, and heightened barriers to their active societal participation. With a wide base of members and volunteers, FEMALE, throughout this project, seeks to address these pressing issues by focusing on access to safe spaces and protection services, and promoting gender equality through awareness-raising and multimedia content. The project will target women and girls from different backgrounds and statuses and engage them in knowledge and skills-development workshops and awareness-raising sessions to equip them with tools as well as ensure the protection of women survivors and at risk of GBV through a holistic case management program. Furthermore, FEMALE will target emerging journalists, filmmakers, content creators, and artists, and equip them with knowledge on gender-sensitive media coverage and production, which will consequently enable them to promote and advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women and girls’ rights.
Partners
FEMALE will be the leading implementing organization; however, we usually adopt a collaborative approach where we coordinate, and partner, when necessary, with different local CSOs, municipalities, and other relevant entities to the different projects accordingly.
Impacts
- FEMALE’s safe spaces in three areas are sustained with full capacity to receive women and girls;
- A non-formal education program is developed to equip women and girls with necessary soft skills to ensure their acquisition of tools and knowledge to challenge stereotypical social norms;
- Women and girls have increased knowledge and awareness on gender and feminist issues;
- 60 emerging journalists, artists, content creators, film makers are equipped with knowledge and skills on gender-sensitive media coverage and multimedia production;
- site and social media platforms.
FEMALE
Established in 2012, FEMALE is a feminist grassroot organization committed to strengthening, expanding, and sustaining the feminist movement across Lebanon and the wider MENA region. FEMALE operates across Lebanon, with a strong grassroots presence through our 5 community centers in Tripoli, Beirut, and in Mount Lebanon. Being a grassroot feminist organization, FEMALE has built its reputation over the years on advancing and advocating for women’s rights, whereby it was able to establish centers across Lebanon between 2018 and 2022 that served as decentralized safe spaces for women and girls in marginalized areas outside the capital.
Sustainable Development Goals
Gender Equality
Goal 5 is specifically dedicated to the empowerment of girls and women. It focuses on achieving gender equality and aims to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls around the world. Targets include eliminating discrimination and violence, ensuring women’s access to leadership and decision-making positions, and achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. This goal intersects with all 16 other SDGs: it supports the integration of gender in all public policy and encourages the adoption of specific policies to fight persistent inequalities, including affirmative measures in favor of women.
