BRIDGE Workshop for Academy for International Development-Middle East

AIDME sponsored a five-day BRIDGE workshop for 22 women leaders and activists from Benghazi, Libya. The objective of the workshop was to build the capacity of a group of Libyan women leaders on governance and election in order to play an active role in policy making to increase women political participation as part of AIDME project in the MENA region.

The Academy for International Development-Middle East (AIDME) is implementing a three year development project in the Middle East and North Africa region. The project entitled “Arab Women’s Policy Center (WPC)” to be implemented jointly with six partner local organizations in six different countries in the MENA region (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen) during 2013-2016.

Through the WPC project, AIDME is working to address some of the challenges facing women in the MENA region especially women political participation. The program overall goal is to increase women’s active participation in public spheres in MENA region for sustainable and gender equitable changes in policies and practice to ensure that the voice of women at all levels, including the poorest and most marginalized, is heard.

The program incorporates number of activities to be implemented with the direct and indirect beneficiaries. The project has four incorporated outcomes. One of these four outcomes is focusing only on election and BRIDGE to build the capacity of women leaders on governance and election. In order to achieve this goal, in a divers condition, of each country out of the six target countries, AIDME is implementing specific local initiative for each country.

In order for the WPC program to achieve its planned outcomes especially its outcome one “Capacity of women leaders increased on governance and election. To increase women participation on election not only as a voter and candidate but also as a policy maker, BRIDGE proofed to be the most effective means to do so. The purpose of BRIDGE program within the regional project is to build the capacity of a group of women leaders on governance and election in order to play an active role in policy making to increase women political participation in MENA region.