Last month of November, we were invited as guest speaker to the Balance for Business roadshow, the annual event on diversity within Airbus group.

Only 16% women engineers in Airbus, 10% in the expert pool and 4% of the global experts so there is still some room for improvement!

The objective of the roadshow, a bottom up organization is to showcase the different internal communities working on a more inclusive workforce, would it be in terms of gender, geographical origin or IQ.

 You can check here the presentation that we did there.

For the third year in a row, we supported the competition from Font Vella Eres Impulso which gives a special push to female social entrepreneurs in Spain.

During on full day, like the past 2 editions, we coached the 10 finalists on how to better master their pitch and present their project in a personal and impactful way.

We were very proud of their progress during the final public presentation at Valkyria Hub Space.

As member of the jury, we had a hard time chosing the 2 winners with the other jiry members, Sonia Navarro from ESADE Social innovation institute, Clara Navarro from Ship2B, Alexandra Mitjans from Ashoka Cataluña and Pablo Sanchez from Bcorp España.

Find out more information on the website if you want to register for the next edition!

Last month of July, we were invited to the Ouishare Fest to be part of a panel on gender and urbanism with Eman Karim, from UN Women He for She program, Iman Bibars from Ashoka Arab World, Asmaa Guedira from Womanity and Audrey Noeltner from Womenability.

We talked about different solutions from all around the world to ensure our cities are truly inclusive and safe for both men and women.

Watch the video of our conversation there or our Slideshare on how to build cities with women in mind !

Last month of June, we attended the MenCare Global Meeting in Belgrade.

MenCare is a global fatherhood campaign in nearly 40 countries worldwide to promote men’s involvement as equitable, non violent fathers or caregivers.

It was the opportunity to shoot the interview from Gary Barker, CEO of Promundo NGO and who just presented the 2017 edition of the State of the World’s Fathers, an annual report on world’s only report to provide a global view of the state of men’s contributions to parenting and caregiving. You can watch our interview there.

We also shot local activists from Centar E8 in Belgrade, who in a strong masculine society as the Balkans challenges gender stereotypes among the young generation.

Here is our interview from their staff!

Later on, during the first Smart City event in Belgrade, we were part of a panel on Women in tech and we gave an engaging talk on Women in the cities. Watch the Periscope recording of the talk here!

Mid May, we flew to Paris to take part for the second time in the program Femmes d’Avenir Méditerranée organized by Sciences Po Paris.

About 20 young female leaders from the southern countries of the Mediterranean attended an intensive 10 days program in the best French schools and institutions.

We imparted a masterclass there on storytelling and gender stereotypes to evaluate how much these women were facing.

We met amazing profiles, such as Hend ABDULWAHED, curator of the Global Shapers community in Tripoli, Sherine AMR, an Egyptian hard rock singer in her band Massive Scar Era or Michelle KESERWANY, Lebanese songwriter and activist leveraging her songs to challenge the local political class, or Özge SEBZECI, documentary photographer and journalist based in Istanbul.

We are looking forward the 2018 edition to train more badass women from the Mediterranean!

We love Beyrouth! Such a vibrant city and a mix of culture!

So we were thrilled to land back in Lebanon to attend the release of the report on Masculinities in the Arab World from IMAGES MENA. The report studied on men’s realities, practices, and attitudes with regard to gender norms, gender-equality policies, household dynamics, caregiving and fatherhood, intimate partner violence, sexual diversity, and health and economic stress, among other topics in 4 countries of the Arab world (Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine).

A few results from the study:

• Which men were more likely to support gender equality? Generally, men with greater wealth, with higher education, whose mothers had more education, and whose fathers carried out traditionally feminine household tasks are more likely to hold gender- equitable attitudes.
• In most of the countries, the results show that a significant proportion of men are under enormous pressure (mostly economic), with little recourse to formal healthcare, including mental health services, particularly for smoking and substance use.
• In nearly every other country where IMAGES has been carried out (in other regions of the world), younger men have consistently shown more equitable attitudes and some key practices than their older counterparts; in three of the four countries included in IMAGES MENA, this was not the case.
• Family role models matter: having fathers who encouraged daughters to take on non-traditional professions or to work outside the home, or who allowed daughters to choose their husbands, seems to contribute to the emergence of more empowered women.

So, we took the opportunity to interview Anthony Keedi, Program Manager from Abaad NGO, to know his position on masculinity in the Arab World. If you’re as fascinated by this part of the world as we are, you can watch his interview there and you can also watch his talk at the Spark Talks event we organized in Beyrouth in 2014.

Enjoy!