The project was launched to address the need for a gender equality focus in work with children and adolescents. At a seminar at the Nordic Forum in Malmö 2014, organisations from the Nordic and Baltic regions talked about how girls’ and boys’ group meetings can prevent violence and promote democracy and gender equality.

The organisations behind the project are having great success with the so-called girl and boy group method in the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. The seminar gathered the different actors to exchange experiences and discuss how to jointly spread, develop and ensure a high quality of the method.

The method is based on a democratic and non-hierarchical dialogue between a small group of adolescents and their leader. The underlying idea is always the same: to strengthen the adolescents’ integrity, self-esteem and ability to cooperate and at the same time give them tools to question norms and handle conflicts. The network has continued to collaborate around the methods since the project ended.