The Dominican Republic has been chosen along with Costa Rica, Mexico and Jordan to be part of the pilot project “Close-up: Empowering women during the recovery of Covid-19″.
It is launched by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German Development Cooperation Agency (GIZ) and UN Women.
The one-year project, which began on November 21, 2021 and runs until November 21, 2022, has among its main objectives to strengthen gender equity, training, and empowerment of women in the tourism sector in the face of the critical times of the coronavirus pandemic.
The initiative seeks to integrate tourism administrations, some 10 companies and 4 NGOs from each participating country, which will support the implementation of activities aimed at achieving these goals.
These will include improvements in the legal framework, progress towards the advancement of women’s careers, at least two training programs and the collection of gender-disaggregated tourism employment data.
In close cooperation with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic (MITUR) is actively working to implement action plans specifically designed to provide support in advancing gender equality in tourism and increase opportunities for women within the sector.
In the context of the country of Quisqueyano, the Primer Plano Project seeks to ensure that Dominican women, who prior to the Covid 19 pandemic represented 57.2% of those employed in the accommodation and food services sector, that tourism employment offers them decent working conditions and opportunities to move up the decision-making ladder in their jobs.
Training of Trainers Course
As part of these training programs in the project, the World Tourism Organization invited to the realization in the country of the virtual course ”Training of Trainers”, aimed at people working in tourism institutions of the public sector, entities and private companies that have interest and/or commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Also invited are specialists working for sustainable development in tourism who want to improve their knowledge on the topic in question.
The course will be held on Monday, February 14 and Wednesday, February 16 in six 90-minute sessions, from 8 to 9:30 AM; 10 to 11:30 AM and 12:30 to 2:00 PM, (Dominican Republic time).
The training will be participatory and interactive, combining presentations by trainers; work in pairs, small groups and individual study time with breaks between sessions.
At the end of the course, participants will receive a certificate of participation and the complete Primer Plano training package in order to be able to deliver the training independently.
Among the objectives of the training are to understand why gender equity is important for tourism and how tourism can promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
In addition, to review the recommendations provided by the UNWTO Women in Tourism Action Plan to address the challenges, as well as to explore good practices in the sector.
