Free to be You and Me – a living toolkit for group leaders

In 2021, SCI and volunteers from partner organisations in Africa created this Living Toolkit – a resource for organising activities which are safe and inclusive when it comes to gender.

Two main themes of the ongoing project ‘Grassroots Change’ (coordinated by SCI Catalunya) are tackling Gender and Decolonisation in international volunteering. With the work and input of African partner organisations, SCI’s existing gender toolkit ‘Free to be You and Me’ was updated to be useful for African realities. It highlights inspiring past activities on gender in Africa and beyond, new non-formal education methods, and diverse resources.

We call it the Living Toolkit, because it has a flexible format, which means organisations can continue to add or remove the content relevant to their local reality. New contributions are always welcomed!

The toolkit is intended to help activity leaders to plan and carry out activities which go some way to addressing specific needs (those highlighted above and others) and to
maintain an inclusive approach in their leadership.

This toolkit came to life in a cooperative framework of several projects – Step to the future: empowering youth leaders to tackle gender inequalities, and Grassroots change: Volunteering, leadership and emancipation through hands-on work and mentoring, thanks to financial support of the UNESCO’s Participation Programme and the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union.