News

Over 40 participants from different countries around the world were present in the life decision - Global Partner Meeting, held in Brussels, Belgium, on 22 and 23 October. The meeting served to assess the achievements of each country involved in DFL project. As part of the activities, delegates exchanged information on the actions that each organization is committed to develop to meet the objectives of the project and share new ideas to promote formal employment and equal opportunities for young women in the labor market. At this meeting, UNI was represented by the Head of Department for Equal Opportunities Veronica Fernandez Mndez, along with Raquel Mora Department Assistant in Nyon, Rosangela da Silva from FETIGESP Brazil and the Responsible of UNI Women's Group in the Americas, Kathy Gonzalez.



Marieke Koning ITUC welcomed all delegates and presented the agenda. Followed, Paulien Osse Chairwoman of WageIndicator Foundation coordinated the session, addressed to know the challenges faced in developing the project, these are some of the highlights:

· Africa: delegates suggest appropriate the project objective to the reality of each country. In Angola for example, many young women have financial difficulties, “that is why we work together with radio station, the only means of global communication where people can easily exchange information, create spaces of discussion and freely express their opinion”. In Zimbabwe, political problems greatly impede the progress of the project, however, efforts are made to publicize it through the newspapers. In South Africa not all the population has Internet connection, so young people use the new techniques to chat through mobile phones ,

· Brazil: Not all people have internet access, many young workers only has in the workplace, so women involved in the project use tools such as newspapers, magazines, newsletters and websites of unions to train and raise awareness of the project,

· India: “This project has been beneficial to organize women's networks, and organize trade union campaign. We also have provided training on different issues as of negotiation skills, in addition”.



About the expressed by the delegates, Marieke underlined that the challenge would be "involve more young women into the project, for that trade unions play an important role, we should discuss how to reach them young people, how to approach them to the labor movement.



UNI America made a PPT presentation that shown the different activities undertaken and the achievement reached during the DFL Project Launch Seminar held in Praia Grande Brazil. Also exhibited and distributed material as poster, pictures, postcard produced for the Praia Grande seminar and the Manual of organization tools released on the occasion. In addition, the delegates of the Praia Grande seminar produced a short video where they dramatize the main problems faced by young workers in Brazil.



Among other discussions, there was a debate on working together with independent journalist and trade union activist to improve live of women. The participants stressed that each responsible for carrying out the project should receive training on media and the web, since that new communication technologies are a vehicle for reaching young women. Meanwhile Veronica pointed out that UNI makes use of both: internal and external communication, it means that the department has a website on which appear the stories of the affiliates. In the extranet, a bulletin is launched every three month, the trade union organizations share information worldwide. Veronica also emphasized that in order to achieve the expected goals, communication must be structured and updated to the means of each country/region, making use of the internet in those where the access is available, and using magazines, bulletins, newspapers and/or any other means in where internet is not accessible.

In this regard, and as part of the program, the participants were requested to develop an action plan to improve the output of the project, either a workshop or plenary discussion (or both). Portuguese-speaking countries: South Africa and Brazil were organized and presented the following action plan:

Contact: briceida.gonzalez@uniglobalunion.org