On 22 September, the End FGM European Network held the second part of its 2020 General Assembly. It was entirely dedicated to our Members sharing with each other their work, ideas and experiences. In the morning, different Members and Ambassadors had their own parallel sessions, where they talked about sexual education, community engagement, the access to services, the relationship between men & FGM, and child protection services. In the afternoon, our Advocacy Team organised an advocacy workshop for all the Members.

We are hosting an online interactive training on How to Report on FGM. It will be a 2.5 hours training & will give journalists the tools and knowledge to cover FGM in a way that will educate the public, provide accurate narratives and facts, and avoid stigmatisation. The training will be delivered in English, by Serena Fiorletta (AIDOS), Dr Amina Easat-Daas, and Leyla Hussein OBE. It will be facilitated by Celine Fabrequette.

For the eighth time, the coalition of nine Civil Society Organisation joined forces to organise the European Week of Action for Girls (EWAG), a week-long programme of events and activities, based around the International Day of the Girl Child, on Friday, 11 October. A group of close to 30 young advocates, from Europe and Africa, connected online to share their recommendations with European Union decision-makers!

In 2020, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, an important milestone in the fight for women's rights and Gender Equality. End FGM EU's Advocacy Team created the Advocacy Toolkit on Beijing Platform for Action implementation to help you check if your governments complied to what they agreed to do 25 years ago, related to FGM.

During the past months, Gender ABC had a complete restyling! While some of the partners are getting back to schools, we are also organising exciting things for the following months!

End FGM EU's Secretariat has a new addition: Hani Diriye. She is the European Solidarity Corps volunteer and will be working to implement the project "Understanding and supporting the work of community based organisations". 

During the past months, the Youth Ambassadors filmed, edited and published 10 videos in the YouTube Series #ThePurpleChair, that covers extremely important topics to them. 

Some examples? Domestic violence, Feminism & Activism, How to access support and many more!

If you didn't already watch the Series (or also if you did, but you feel ready for a rewatch) & don't know where to start, take our quiz to find out what video you should watch first!

On 15 September, it took place the final conference of the two-year project Let’s CHANGE (co-financed by the European Union): "How to overcome challenges in ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the European Union (and beyond)?". The conference included three different workshops with CHANGE Agents on the role of key professionals, care & support services and community empowerment.

Our Portuguese Youth Ambassadors, Ana Aua Só and Fatu Banora, organised an Online Workshop on the importance of involving young people from the affected communities in the fight against FGM, and promoted the publication of the Portuguese version of the Youth Engagement Manifesto.

Our italian Member, AIDOS, has been working hard throughout the summer and back to school period. 

AIDOS presented the new UNFPA 2020 Report, participated in the organisation of an International Stakeholder Dialogue and is also completing the MED-RES project.

Our Member, the Finnish League for Human Rights, published a study on Finnish Somali men's awareness and perceptions of FGM. It is based on qualitative data consisting of interviews with 29 Finnish Somali men living in the Helsinki region, in Finland.

During the past months, our Ambassadors continued to spread awareness on FGM! Three of them had their own panel at our General Assembly, while two of them spoke during interesting online events! 

On 7 October, GAMS Belgium, AIDOS and End FGM EU launched a month-long online dialogue on "Preventing and Responding to FGM in Emergency and Humanitarian Contexts" with around 80 experts from all over the world taking part. The dialogue will be about  how to maximise our efforts towards ending FGM and better support services for women and girls affected by the practice in emergency and humanitarian settings.
At the end, the resulting recommendations to donors and governments will be presented on 12 November in a final Webinar!

On 15 October, there was the first session of a virtual Symposium on "Patriarchal Inscriptions on Women’s Bodies", organised by the King’s College London. End FGM EU participated with Equality now and the US Network in the panel discussion "Mobilizing a Robust Global Narrative to Dismantle Socially and Politically Constructed Racial, Cultural, and Geographical Boundaries within FGM Discourse".
We presented the report "FGM/C: A Call For A Global Response" and provided an overview of our initiatives and research.

The North America & Europe Caucus organised a Zoom Workshop scheduled for Friday, 23 October, at 16:00 (Brussels time), to which our Head of Policy and Advocacy will participate. In honour of International Day of the Girl Child, the event will address the current problems affecting girls at risk of FGM and Child Marriage in North America, Europe and beyond. 

The WISH (Welcome, Integration & Support Hub for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Europe) Platform for Refugees aims at mapping the associations that offer support to migrants in Europe. It is a ESC project launched in October 2018 and it will:

• Enable refugees and asylum seekers to find sources of support and assistance; 
• Help the various European volunteering initiatives to provide better information and to facilitate communication between themselves and the people they wish to help.

We think this is a great initiative that comes to fill a gap in services for refugees and asylum seekers in Europe. It is important that the information on available support is easily accessible to them!