The Gender Equality Festival showed that the young people of Sibiu are creative!

The people from Sibiu had the chance to experience a different Valentine's Day thanks to the Gender Equality Festival organised in Sibiu by A.L.E.G. in the period 12-14 February. The most popular events were the two evenings of forum theatre and the street actions organised under the name "Choose your words'.

At the forum theatre, the public enjoyed a unique experience, that of the spectaCTOR. The forum theatre is a form of educational theatre which involves the public in solving specific problematic situations of everyday life. 5 students of the School of Letters and Arts (Adrian Grigoras, Michael Paicu, Alexandra Ceaca, Doriana Taut, Laurentiu Vlad) played short negative situation which were then discussed with the public in a forum. solutions were suggested and in the end the public had the chance to go on the stage and replace the actors with the purpose of testing the solutions suggested and change the end. The scenarios were created with the purpose of exploring the topic of gender roles and couples under the direction of the A.L.E.G. members and of the forum theatre specialist, Roxana Marin, who was also very skillful in moderating the forum. “It was a bit difficult to break the ice at the beginning, but then when the 50 youngsters in the room started to express their opinions, it was hard to stop them. The public had an average of 5 interventions and the forum lasted over 2 hours. The people's reaction exceeded our expectations”, says the A.L.E.G. director, Camelia Proca.

With the help of the letter-volunteers, 60 people wrote St. Valentine's messages during the action "Choose your words". The challenge launched to the passer-byes was for them to find a key-word which defines their relation with the loved-one. Those who joined our game received digital photos with their message. The age of the participants was between 16 and 20; those over 20 considered the action useful and interesting, but did not have time or found it hard to find a word. A daddy who had gone out for a walk with his two baby twins chose the word "always". Other messages were: "special", "nonconformist", "distance", "child", "flying" or "the baby comes".

You may also download the festival brochure and poster:

Statistics of the National Agency for Family Protection on family violence

Download the Power Point file.

Public events aimed at raising awareness on family violence

In this period the world celebrates the 16 international days for the elimination of violence against women. In Sibiu, the Association for Gender Freedom and Equality - A.L.E.G. organises on December 10 and 15 a series of events aimed at raising awareness and providing information. A.L.E.G. joins the campaign initiated by the Sensi-Blu Foundation with the message "Family violence is not a story".

15 December – 700 candles for the Silent Witnesses

On 15 December, starting from 4 p.m. at the fountain from the Nicolae Balcescu Street, A.L.E.G. will organise the street action "Silent Witnesses". The red silhouettes symbolically represent women who lost their lives due to domestic violence. Each silhouette will bear the story of a case from the county of Sibiu. According to the statistics of the National Agency for Family Protection, during the last 5 years 723 deaths caused by family violence were registered in Romania. With the help of the passer-bies, ALEG will light up 700 candles to emphasize that family violence is not just a simple story, that it may be fatal. We will be waiting for you there!

10 December – The Human Rights' Day