Minerva is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2020 in Forlí by a group of youth workers, mentors, volunteers and friends that have a common interest in sharing their personal and professional experience for fighting against gender violence, promoting the empowerment of women, the full exercise of their rights and the achievement of gender equality, as essential conditions to achieve social justice, to sustainable human development and peace. Minerva direct target group are young people among 14-30 years old.
From Minerva we can affirm that it is not possible to speak of gender equality if we do not consider that it is a human right, and at the same time, we cannot speak of the enjoyment of rights, if we do not consider the right to equality between men and women, in their enjoyment and access to civil, political, social, cultural and economic rights. For this reason, in our activities we don’t include just young women but also young men because for young men is important to understand why gender equality is good for everyone, recognizing their role in promoting the empowerment of young women. Young men have the ability to shift the dominant norms and ideas about gender and masculinity, and challenge the societal beliefs, practices, institutions and structures that drive inequality between men and women.
Mission: Minerva mission is to combat the structural causes that restrict women’s citizenship and / or affect their exercise. Consequently, it is proposed to influence the achievement of equal opportunities between women and men and the fight against gender violence and against any form of discrimination against women and girls.
Vision: The vision of Minerva is to be a reference organization in the fight for effective equality between women and men, to lead the construction of a more just and equal society, a strengthened democratic society and without discrimination or exclusion of any kind, where women fully exercise their rights and citizenship, without the existence of a patriarchal culture as a system of social organization and androcentrism as a global representation of humanity.
Values: Minerva supports its work on the pillars of the following values: Equality, equity, freedom, sisterhood, interculturality, diversity, the active participation of women and men, leadership, coherence in our actions, transparency in operation and regulation of the association and transparency also in the planning and monitoring of the association’s activity, as well as in the financing and use of funds and in the fulfillment of obligations.