Today, on 5 November 2021, the Council of Europe* in partnership with Poltava Oblast Council has launched a pilot implementation of the training programme, developed based on the Council of Europe toolkit** for local authorities and non-governmental organisations aimed at enhancing young women’s and girls’ participation in political and public decision-making processes at local level.

The training programme will be implemented throughout November 2021 and will cover the following topics:

• Human rights and gender equality
• Participation in public and political life at regional and local levels
• Leadership and achieving success
• Advocacy basics
• Political and public engagement: contacts and opportunities
• Project management basics

At the opening ceremony, the participants were welcomed by Oleksandr Lemeshko, First Deputy Chair of Poltava Oblast Council, Tetyana Yurchenko, Member of Poltava Oblast Council, Inna Zubar, Project Manager at the Council of Europe project “Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine” and Volodymyr Kebalo, Senior Project Officer at the Council of Europe project “Strengthening civil participation in democratic decision making in Ukraine”.

The first session of the training programme is devoted to human rights and gender equality, so the participants at this very moment are learning in an interactive format about international documents and standards in the field of human rights and gender equality, national mechanism for ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men, gender stereotypes, sexism and its forms, discrimination, its forms and types, as well as legal mechanisms for protection of violated rights. The training is led by Oleksandra Holub, lawyer and founder of the Ukrainian NGO Women’s Rights Protection League “Harmony of Equals”.

Tomorrow, on 6 November 2021, the participants will train their skills necessary for further participation and active engagement in public and political life at local and regional levels with Leontiy Shypilov, election expert, PhD in Law, member of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine in 2018-2019. The training session will cover, in particular, the following topics: the constitutional fundamentals of the Ukraine as a state; system of state bodies: status, powers, division of functions and competencies; structure and powers of local self-governance bodies; tools and ways to involve citizens in the process of public and political decision-making at local/regional level; civil participation in the development of local self-government and community/region.

The training programme of the Council of Europe, being piloted in Poltava, is aimed to help the participants to train the skills and qualities necessary for further active engagement in local public and political life, including skills needed for the development and implementation of participants’ own projects at local level, effective communication, interpersonal communication, teamwork, leadership qualities, awareness about public, political, and electoral processes.

* Piloting of the Toolkit is implemented in cooperation and with the support of the Council of Europe projects “Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine” and “Strengthening civil participation in democratic decision making in Ukraine”

** The toolkit was developed with the support of the Council of Europe project “Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine”, implemented within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine for 2018-2022