The workshop delved into the fundamental principles and best practices of gender mainstreaming, empowering municipalities with the knowledge and tools necessary to create an inclusive and equitable environment and services. Within thematic working groups, participants from 18 municipalities from Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon have developed ideas for solutions to address impediments of gender mainstreaming in municipalities. The ideas were further elaborated into action plans covering the following topics:

1. Mini Mobile Municipality: The municipalities of Karak and Salt (Jordan), Nablus, Aizariya, Dura, and Ramallah (Palestine) are planning to overcome the existing impediments to certain gender groups hindering their accessibility to municipal services. Citizens living in remote areas (particularly elderly, women, and low-income citizens with limited access to transportation means) are the most impacted by this challenge. Launching the ‘mini mobile municipality’, which is a mobile station for digital municipal services, shall increase the participation of the local community in the planning process, improve feedback mechanisms, and access to digital services for all segments of the local community.
2. Equity insurance municipal unit: The municipalities of Ramtha and Bab Amman (Jordan), Nablus (Palestine), and Chekka (Lebanon) are striving for improving equity in service provision to the local citizens. With the mandate of devising and monitoring equity standards for the provision of municipal services, the envisioned municipal unit shall implement activities aiming at improving the level of trust and satisfaction with services, mainstreaming gender consideration in municipal activities, increasing citizens willingness to pay for municipal services, improving institutional development of municipal departments, job satisfaction and productivity of municipal employees.
3. Partner Community (Mojtama' Shareek): The municipalities of Hebron and Jenin (Palestine), Saida and Anfeh (Lebanon) are planning to institutionalise participation of the local community in decision making. ‘Partner Community’ shall serve as an instrument to ensure gender mainstreaming in planning municipal projects and activities by increasing the active participation in planning and priorities setting, as well as enhancing confidence and increasing the political and economic participation of different gender groups.

As part of the workshop, the participants have learned about the achievements of Greater Amman municipality (GAM) in this field that was presented by the director of the Regional Network for Women at GAM (Dr. Manal Al Abdallat). A field visit to a public park in Amman was also organised, that manifests a variety of measures and considerations for gender mainstreaming by attending to the needs of the local community groups including men, women, youth and children, refugees and people with disabilities.

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Watch video about the workshop at YouTube: https://youtu.be/JHvDIx2e40k