Announcement: KNOWLYMPICS 2023

Published: July 10, 2023

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Dear colleagues,

we are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated KNOWLYMPICS 2023, our yearly knowledge sharing games!  

The KNOWLYMPICS serve as a vital tool within our Knowledge Management Programme, fostering the capitalisation of experiences and the exchange within our network. We believe that by sharing both successes and challenges, we can collectively deepen our understanding, inspire others, and pave the way for meaningful change.  

7th KNOWLYMPICS edition
with special focus on
the fight for women’s rights

If you have a positive experience (learning from good practice) or negative experiences (learning from failure/challenge) related to advancing women’s rights –this year’s KNOWLYMPICS is for you!   

As you may well know, the task of advancing women’s rights and gender equality is at the centre of our new framework 2023-2026. We thus invite you to submit your experiences on this topic, which of course encompasses a broad spectrum of issues. These may include, for example: 

  • Women’s Political Action and Leadership: Present initiatives that promote women in political processes, including increasing representation in decision-making bodies and fostering inclusive political environments on all levels. 
  • Women’s Access to Justice and Legal Rights: Share experiences of programs that enhance women’s access to justice, focusing on initiatives that address legal barriers, provide legal aid services, and promote rights awareness and legal literacy. 
  • Strengthening Civil Society and Communities: Present experiences of civil society organizations working towards gender justice, highlighting their advocacy efforts, capacity-building initiatives, and community mobilization strategies. 
  • Combating Gender-Based Violence (GBV): Highlight strategies, programs, and policies that effectively tackle GBV, including prevention, support structures, legal frameworks, and community engagement approaches. 
  • Engaging Men for Gender Equality: Present interventions that actively involve men and boys, challenging harmful gender norms and stereotypes, fostering positive masculinities, and promoting gender-equitable relationships and behaviours. 
  • Women’s Land Rights: Share initiatives that aim to secure and strengthen women’s rights to land and property, ensuring their economic empowerment and reducing gender disparities in land ownership. 
  • Increasing Women’s Visibility: Showcase initiatives that promote a culture of respect, dignity, and inclusivity, where women’s voices are heard, their experiences are valued, and their contributions are recognized. 
  • Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Share experiences with promoting the right to comprehensive sexuality education, informed family planning, and freedom of choice, and with combating violations such as FGM and forced marriage.  
  • Women in Sustainable Agriculture: Showcase interventions that empower women in rural communities through sustainable agricultural practices, promoting their leadership and access to resources. 

As always, participating in the KNOWLYMPICS not only gives you the chance to win a PRIZE for your organisation but:

“…those who share always win something – because sharing benefits us all” – Caritas Kaolack, Senegal 

Everybody can get something out of these knowledge sharing games, as all submitted experiences will be published on the KNOW-HOW3000 platform and shared within our knowledge network.

As usual, we will be drawing winner organisations among all submissions that will receive prizes between 500 and 1000 Euros. Prizes can be used for Knowledge Management purposes according to the needs of the winning organisations. This can be an exchange visit to another organisation, training for your staff, equipment for the office or any other material prize that can be used in the organisation’s daily or project-based work. 

When selecting your experience, please consider the following criteria:

  • You are a current project partner (either Technical Assistance or financing project) of HORIZONT3000 or our Member Organisations.
  • The experience must refer to a specific practice, method, strategy or approach your organisation has applied in its projects and programmes. Get inspired: by clicking on the red links in the list above you can see partner experiences related to women’s rights that have already been shared.
  • The experience must be considered potentially relevant for other organisations in our knowledge network. The most important thing is the possibility to learn from it! Negative experiences & failures can be part of successful project work and teach us a lot! Therefore, we especially encourage the submission of relevant negative experiences.

Why advancing women's right?

Women’s rights are crucial pillars of a just and equitable society. Achieving gender justice and equality is thus not only a matter of human rights but also essential for the sustainability and well-being of societies. By claiming women’s rights, we can create a world where everybody, regardless of their gender, can flourish and live a good life.

While there has been progress in certain areas recently, such as universal primary education, gender inequality remains a global challenge, with far-reaching effects on individuals, societies as well as ecological systems. Structural and systemic injustices based on unequal power relations and discriminating norms – all elements which characterize patriarchal societies – reproduce gender-based violence and strip women of their legal, political, and economic rights.

Substantially, advancing gender justice and equality also entails the recognition of women’s different and even diverging experiences, interests, and challenges. Intersecting forms of discrimination and overlapping disadvantages especially affect those from marginalised communities, indigenous backgrounds, or with disabilities. CSOs/CBOs like our partner organisations play a major role in addressing these barriers and biases and challenge the status quo with advocacy and community engagement.

 

Useful Links & References

How to participate?

In order to participate, fill out one of the following “learning from experience” questionnaires… 

…and send it to Diego Freudenthaler. 

This year we have brand new questionnaires for the capitalisation of your experiences. Incorporating your feedback and improvement suggestions, they were shortened and adapted to be more useful. 

Based on your questionnaires, we produce accessible one-page presentations (“Good Practices” and “Learnings from Failure” at a Glance) as well as detailed descriptions (“Good Practices” and “Learnings from Failure” in Detail). 

Note: If you already have an experience capitalisation document, e.g. produced in the context of a systematisation, you do not need to fill out a questionnaire but can submit your existing document instead. 

Submission Deadline: December 1, 2023

All questionnaires that are presented in a comprehensive and understandable way and submitted by the deadline will be considered.

We are sure you have many stories and experiences with advancing women’s rights worth sharing that others can learn from. This is why we are very much looking forward to receiving your submissions!

Diego Freudenthaler

Diego Freudenthaler

Diego is currently supporting the Knowledge Management Team in Vienna. His main playground is the KNOW-HOW3000 platform and everything concerned with it. Don’t hesitate to contact him if you have any requests, questions, recommendations or comments regarding the platform. We are always grateful for improvement suggestions.

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