Strengthening Female Community Leaders Erasmus Project

Project Title

Strengthening Female Community Leaders

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The global community is realising how critical it is for women to participate in leadership positions. The UN has cited “ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life” as Sustainable Development Goal 5. SHINE partners work with women every day, women that create and contribute to thousands of vibrant, visionary organisations.

Women remain absent from key positions to shape access to and control resources. In the UK and Ireland, women make up more than two-thirds of the voluntary sector. However, women account for only 37% of managers, 30% of board members and 19% of senior executives. Italy faces similar statistics. Despite this particular sector valuing social justice, there is significant gender inequality and barriers to leadership in the sector. Sweden is a gender equality role model from which we can transfer learning.

Leadership education on offer is skewed towards those with higher education or live in an urban area. SHINE project will address this by developing leadership training that is wholly responsive to the needs of women from all socio-economic, ethnic and geographic backgrounds.

SHINE will upskill women with the knowledge and behaviours necessary to confidently and successfully transition into leadership roles in their third sector /community workplace.
SHINE targets female staff of nonprofit sector organisations who have not traditionally had access to leadership training because they work for smaller organizations with small/non-existent training budgets live in areas with no access to specialist training provision, come from disadvantaged backgrounds economically and/or have few formal qualifications, form part of a minority or immigrant community and women that can transfer these leadership skills in the private or public sector.

SHINE also targets EDUCATION PROVIDERS (VET colleges, enterprise agencies, local authorities, HEIs) who recognise the value of training future leaders in 3rd sector, but lack understanding of the macro need, their role as changemakers and the pedagogical strategies to teach others.

THIRD/NONPROFIT SECTOR ORGANISATIONS who wish to invest in the professional development of their female staff, offering career progression and opportunities for public leadership at each level: informal (early-career workers with leadership potential), emerging (people who are first time management), strategic (managers in charge of other managers).
GENDER EQUALITY ADVOCATES, female empowerment networks, regional skills authorities who wish to promote holistic approaches to working with communities and causes, focusing on changing mindsets and promoting local solutions to women’s leadership challenges.

The immediate result of the SHINE project is the development, implementation and mainstreaming of targeted training resources to fulfil women’s potential as future leaders. The first tangible results of the project are the intellectual outputs, which work together to address the gaps in attitudes, policy, knowledge and skills that organisations need to move towards more inclusive practices:
IO1: SHINE Reach and Teach VET Educators Toolkit
IO2: SHINE Strengthening Female Community Leaders Open Education Resources
IO3: SHINE Digital Transformation Best Practice Compendium
At an individual level, women develop their ‘voice’ and are confident about taking on greater challenges in their professional careers and in their communities, they understand leadership skillset and components of effective leadership in contemporary communities and identify areas of professional and civic development and they possess the practical skills to exercise leadership for positive change in their communities: problem-solving, communication, collaboration, creativity etc.

Community/3rd Sector impact:
-Greater number of women and diversity in decision-making roles
– Increased participation in community projects as women engage, enthuse and enrol more actors in the community in their work and their missions
– Participants will be able to use digital tools to transform and future-proof their organisations.
Through our training and dissemination process, the project will then produce the following results within its lifespan:
• 300 trainers acquire new transversal skills in women leadership and the exchange of good leadership practices and go on to empower hundreds of women working in the third sector
• 150 educators working in the VET sector will participate in the SHINE user testing, assisting the optimisation of the resources as well as priming them for the immediate rollout of the Teaching Resources in partner organisations
• 1,000+ community, public and economic leaders will download and use the Practice Guide, Assessment tool and Teaching Resources and use them to extend and improve their training services to work with emerging female leaders.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 281455 Eur

Project Coordinator

Dungannon Enterprise Centre & Country: UK

Project Partners

• MERIDAUNIA
• MOMENTUM MARKETING SERVICES LIMITED
• THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST
• European E-learning Institute
• European YWCA