OSCE Presence empowers women councillors in Albania through Women Municipal Excellence Programme
On 7 and 8 October 2022, the OSCE Presence in Albania awarded 20 motivated women members of municipal councils who completed the Women Municipal Excellence Programme (WoMEP), and also organized the second training module for 22 other women councillors, WoMEP’s third generation.
WoMEP assists women councillors to link gender-sensitive policies and proposals with municipal budgets, as a primary source for funding initiatives addressing the needs of the communities at the local level. As in the last two editions, the proposals developed by the third generation of WoMEP councillors will be presented to the respective councils for funding in the 2023 municipal budgets.
Over the last three years, the Presence has assisted active local women councillors to develop concrete project proposals to be implemented in their municipalities, ranging from tourism promotion, and assistance for the victims of the 2019 earthquake, to support to victims of gender-based violence. WoMEP has so far enabled over 60 women municipal councillors from across Albania to increase the footprint of women in decision-making at the local level.
“The local level is the closest to the citizens and this is where you can build trust in the institutions. If you manage to create trust in yourselves and in your work, then you also manage to create trust in Albania’s institutions at large,” Deputy Head of Presence Clarisse Pasztory said at the event. She added that she hoped many of the WoMEP participants would run in 2023 local elections and be elected again as councillors or even as mayors.
Members of the Alliance of Women Parliamentarians – a forum created upon an initiative of the OSCE Presence – also participated at the event. Alliance’s Chair Merita Bakiu and Deputy Chair Etilda Gjonaj expressed their readiness to work towards strengthening the networking between women MPs and local municipal councillors to advance initiatives at the local level.