Evaluation Seminar recaps five years of implementation of OSCE project on mentor networks for women’s empowerment

Women from the OSCE area face numerous challenges and barriers to fully participate in economic, social and political life. In 2013 the OSCE Gender Section, in co-operation with the Danish organization KVINFO, initiated a project on establishing mentor networks, with the ultimate goal to empower women in the OSCE region.

After five years of project implementation, the OSCE Gender Section brought together key stakeholders and beneficiaries in Vienna on 29 January 2018, to map and review the main results achieved. In a highly interactive workshop, participants shared their views on how the project has made a difference in women’s lives and how they overcame barriers in setting up mentor networks. “Seeing women who were once mentees advancing their careers and becoming mentors themselves has been a most rewarding experience,” said Svetlana Stefanovic from the Serbian NGO European Movement.

Participants shared the success factors of mentor networks, including adapting OSCE tools to the local context, creating a pool of professional mentors and working together with local and international partners. During the five years of the project, a number of key results were achieved, including the creation of a practical roadmap for creating mentor networks and the establishment of six networks reaching more than 200 women in the OSCE region, from Roma and rural women to women working as police and lawyers.

Transferring knowledge from mentor to mentee not only empowers women at the individual level, it can also have a far-reaching impact on women’s empowerment in social, economic and governance sectors. Christine Jantscher, the facilitator of the seminar, concluded: “This programme exists not only for its own sake but also to achieve progress towards improving gender equality.”