January 2021 – December 2023
Project Young Men Initiative (YMI): Promoting Healthier Lifestyles and Decrease of Interpersonal Violence among Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Challenging Gender Stereotypes; Phase III started on January 2021, and is supported by the Government of Switzerland and CARE Deutschland.
Gender transformative programming within Young Men Initiative projects started in 2006 and supported by Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) in the last two phases (2014-2017; 2017- current) has brought outstanding contribution to enabling positive and peaceful societies and healthy environment for young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as well as in the region of the Western Balkans in cooperation with the Austrian Development Cooperation, CARE Deutschland and Oak Foundation from Switzerland.
The third phase (2021-2023) is focused on producing tangible, long-term systematic solutions, the key one being the official integration of Program Y (for high schools) and Program E (for higher grades of elementary schools) as part of the compulsory curriculums beyond the project duration in the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of intensive collaboration with the Ministries of Education. CARE and its partners Institute for Population and Development from Sarajevo, Institute Perpetuum Mobile from Banja Luka and Youth Power from Mostar will continue to build on the accomplishments of the first two phases and ensure the realization of adequate solutions that will last beyond project lifetime.
The YMI third phase is strongly focused on creating an enabling environment for a long-term systematic solution for life skills education of high school and elementary school students. All efforts will be joined to accomplish the overall goal: to contribute to creating positive and peaceful societies for young people in BiH that support gender equality, improve health and decrease interpersonal violence.
For building on and going beyond the earlier achievements the YMI phase III will specifically (specific objective) induce the adoption of life skills curricula by educational institutions, enabling educators to support young people in developing healthy, non-violent, gender equitable behaviour and thereby facilitate their smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood.
This will be accomplished through work on institutionalization, standardization and quality insurance of comprehensive Program Y in high schools as well as piloting and implementing Program E for healthy lifestyle education in elementary schools in BiH. Furthermore, YMI III will continue in paving the way for social change in BiH by gathering support of movement/ coalition building through the development of new alliances that engage teachers, parents, universities, media representatives, young people and citizens in supporting gender equality focused life skills education program.
We expect the program to directly reach 10,000 high school and elementary students, as well as 300 teachers over a three-year period. Regarding universities, 100 university students would be enrolled, while 20 academic staff as well will be engaged in embedding Program Y in university curriculum. The campaign activities and YMI movement activities are supposed to reach 200,000 people mainly in 8 targeted communities but also across the entire country.
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