On May 11, 2022, the public association (PA) “Keik Okara” with the support of the Governance Support Program (GSP) in Turkmenistan project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) held a Roundtable (RT) “Discussion of the development of a joint action plan to promote gender equality and elimination of all forms of discrimination against women”. The RT, which was held at the Digital Economy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center of the Union of Economists of Turkmenistan, brought together about 20 representatives of PAs, including representatives of international organizations. About 10 people who could not physically attend the RT joined online via ZOOM.
The meeting was attended by an employee of the US Embassy in Turkmenistan, representatives of USAID in Turkmenistan, headed by its country representative, Mrs. Nino Nadiradze, who, opening the event, informed about the implementation of USAID projects in Turkmenistan and noted the relevance of the RT topic.
In the first part of the event, the reports of the PA participants were performed to the audience, namely “Keik Okara”, “Agama”, “Yenme”, “Union of Economists of Turkmenistan”, “Yashyl Shokhle”, “Professional Accountant”. Sabir Agabalaev in his speech noted that the RT is the result of a seminar held on March 18, 2022 “The role of PAs in promoting gender equality”. It was an initiative of PAs in consolidating efforts to promote gender equality. Further, each of the organizations shared positive experiences in their work on the promotion of gender equality, made the presentations on ongoing activities. Presentations by PAs leaders followed by discussion on the presented material, also a productive exchange of views took place on issues of interest.
The second part of the RT was conducted in a more interactive form with active auditoria’s participation. The game “Gender Inequality” was presented to the participants with the distribution of the roles between them. The main purpose of the role-playing game was to give participants an understanding of the whole complex of problems of a particular case when a woman becomes a victim of domestic violence, what she thinks and feels.
The time had been allowed for participants to familiarize themselves with the 10 roles and tasks of the game. After 10 minutes, the participants of the RT began to play the game: they began to communicate with each other, learn about the roles and tasks of other participants, and began to search for a solution for their roles. After the game, each of the participants shared their feelings about the role in the game and about their character, the participants talked about how they were able to interact with other characters and what difficulties they encountered while playing their role.
The topic of the third part of the RT was “Discussion of the draft plan of joint activities to promote gender equality by public associations.” S. Agabalaev presented the planned follow up activities of PA “Keik Okara” on gender equality until the end of 2022 and initiated to a consolidated implementation of this plan. The participants supported the initiative to implement the plan of joint activities to promote gender equality and decided to include in it their activities in 2022.
At the end of the Roundtable, all participants proposed to join efforts in promoting gender equality through joint decision-making and joint activities.
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Berkeli Atayev.
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