Sport as a Vehicle for Social Change and Empowerment, UN Women and Generations for Peace Announce New Partnership

UN Women and Generations For Peace today announced a new partnership to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment using sport as an effective driver of social cohesion and civic engagement. Within this framework, more than 600,000 vulnerable Jordanian and Syrian refugee youth will be engaged in sport-based activities designed to promote a greater understanding of resilience and empowerment from a gender-sensitive perspective. Running till 2019, the initiative will target 300 public schools and 200 youth centers nationwide.

“UN Women is committed to ensuring that Syrian refugee and vulnerable Jordanian women and girls are better served by humanitarian and resilience building initiatives taking place in host communities.” affirmed Mr. Ziad Sheikh, UN Women Jordan Country Representative. “UN Women and Generations For Peace have partnered to improve the participation, leadership and engagement of vulnerable girls in these social cohesion youth initiatives, as well as ensure that such initiatives are gender responsive and address issues of gender-based violence, gender equality and girls empowerment.”  he added.

Global evidences highlight the importance of sport to promote social value change and challenge gender stereotypes. UN Women globally has implemented several programmes which proved that sport can empower, when combined with safe-spaces and holistic life-skills learning opportunities that boost youth development. Through its ongoing collaboration with UNICEF, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Youth, Generations For Peace developed a unique ‘Sport for Peace’ model in Jordan to engage children, youth and adults in integrated education and sustained behavioral change initiatives.

“By investing in the development of competencies and capacities of Jordanian communities to support and incorporate gender-sensitive programming and activities, this partnership with UN Women will help us press forward in our efforts to build resilience and lasting peace.” commented Dr. Mohanned Al Arabiat, the President of Generations For Peace.

This partnership is framed under the UN Women’s programme ‘Expand self-reliance & social cohesion opportunities for Jordanian women in Mafraq Governorate and camp-based Syrian refugee women and promote meaningful engagement in community life (Eid bi Eid)’, which is generously funded by the Governments of Finland, France, Iceland, and Italy. Through ‘Eid bi Eid’, UN Women promotes a resilience framework for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment goals and aims to strengthen individual and community ability to absorb shock, while fostering social cohesion between groups. This is done through the provision of livelihoods opportunities and protection support to Jordanians living in Jordan’s hosting communities and Syrian refugees living in camp and non-camp settings.