Representatives of the GendAi partners in Slovenia, Netherlands, Romania and from EAF visited Musubi dojo in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, for the final meeting of the GendAi Erasmus+ project.
They have designed guidelines to strengthen gender balance in Aikido, which will be disseminated to clubs under the auspices of the EAF. Two of the female instructors present at the meeting, Staša Pisek Sensei 3 Dan and Satomi Ishikawa Sensei 5 Dan, led an international seminar, connex to the meeting.
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Cluj-Napoca, September 16-17 - One year after the opening meeting of the trilateral GendAi consortium in Amsterdam, the project partners met again in Romania, where they reviewed the project's results so far and outlined the activities until the end of the year, when the project to strengthen the gender balance in aikido it ends. After the March meeting and international seminar in Ljubljana, they now visited the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca once again, where the leading partner of the GendAi project, the National Aikikai Federation of Romania, operates. They were once again warmly welcomed and generously entertained in the cultural heritage-filled capital of mystical Transylvania, say Staša and Nika Pisek, who represented the Aikikai Federation of Slovenia at the international meeting. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the national Aikikai Federation of the Netherlands and the European Aikido Federation EAF (European Aikido Federation).
The meeting was intended for an intensive working meeting of colleagues in a project that develops methods to promote gender balance in aikido. The Erasmus+ project GendAi is intended to promote aikido as a sports activity and spiritual practice suitable for all genders. It focuses on attracting beginners to the practice of aikido, motivating women to persist in aikido and taking steps towards progress, as well as encouraging female aikido instructors to be actively involved in the development of this martial art and also engage in leadership positions of clubs, federations and international organizations.
The partners have agreed that by the end of the project, they will establish a website that will summarize the activities in the project, and will also serve to disseminate guidelines for strengthening gender balance in aikido. Namely, they created a manual for clubs, in which they gathered instructions on how to attract women to practice aikido and motivate them to remain active in clubs, and how to encourage female instructors to establish themselves in sports management. The meeting was accompanied by an international seminar, which gathered around 40 participants of all generations, genders and levels of knowledge. Together with the instructor Satomi Ishikawa 5Dan, from the Netherlands, it was led by the Slovenian instructor Staša Pisek 3 Dan.
