What we offer

Emancipator facilitates workshops and training courses for your group, organization or company. We also organize public training sessions, workshops and weekends, check our calendar.

Ideas about masculinity touch many central themes in the lives of children, young people, adults and the elderly, men, women and others, at school, on the street, at work, in technology and health care, in the boardroom, on the caretaker’s desk and at home by the hoover or the nappy bin – in short, everyone. Yet people are often unaware of this. Awareness of the importance of masculinities and engaging men can help solve or prevent all kinds of problems.

That is why we offer training courses, workshops and other interventions for different target groups: schools and other youth groups, professionals and organizations, and companies. With our workshops and trainings, we provide participants with information, inspiration and tools for action. They consist of interactive work formats that encourage reflection and, above all, self-experience of how gender and masculinity works. We provide a safe group in which participants can feel free to share experiences and engage in conversations they have often never had before. Emancipator has more than ten years of experience with workshops and training sessions on gender and masculinity for all kinds of target groups: from school classes to teams at Heineken and Gillette.

Our workshops and trainings are fundamentally always about the same thing: gender in general and masculinity in particular. We raise awareness of how masculinity norms work and together with participants, broaden what it means to be a man. Within that framework, we then focus on a more specific theme: for example, the prevention of (sexual and/or gender-related) violence, the stimulation of care fatherhood or informal care, broadening boys’ perspectives and the development of their talents, more space for gender and sexual diversity, healthy development of sexuality, or even more specific topics within that. Always tailor-made.

Besides tailor-made offerings, we have four more set programs, around four topics:

Preventing sexual violence
IMAGINE: The solution

Far too many women and girls are confronted with (online) sexual violence, especially committed by boys and men. This workshop gives participants insight into how ideas about masculinity are related to (sexual) violence, and makes them think about relationships and sexuality, transgressive behavior and how boys and men can become part of the solution. De Volkskrant attended a series of workshops (in Dutch, 2021).

More freedom in study and career choices
IMAGINE: Your future

Ffew girls end up in engineering or ICT, and few boys in healthcare or education. Why is that? In this workshop, pupils and students learn how gender stereotypes work and how norms can influence small and big choices. For primary, secondary and secondary vocational education. More about IMAGINE: Your future.

Happy dating
IMAGINE: Your relationships

Who pays on a date? Who makes the first move? There are all kinds of unwritten rules for that, often linked to expectations society has of men and women. And especially when it comes to vulnerable situations in dating and relationships, young people, especially boys, struggle with these expectations, but find it difficult to discuss them. Together with Qpido, we launched this programme in autumn 2024.

Equal political representation
IMAGINE: Politica

With Alliantie Politica, we are working towards a better representation of women in all their diversity in politics. Men need to contribute to that too. In this training, we explore how men can get involved in making politics safer and more inclusive, and the benefits that will bring, not only to women but also to themselves and society as a whole. With this training, we are making men part of the solution for equal representation in politics.

For Utrecht and Amsterdam (in the Safe Cities program) we usually have a dedicated, free offer of workshops and trainings. For more information, contact us using the form below.

Peer education

Depending on the target group, our workshops are almost always delivered by two people, an experienced trainer and a peer educator. You can find our trainers and peer educators on our team page. We work based on the principle of peer education: peer educators are connected to the target group, and we deliberately do not set up our sessions as lessons but as interactive dialogue sessions. We invite participants to actively engage with the topics we cover and provide frameworks for discussion so that participants can come to their own insights. In other words, not a boring lesson but an interactive dialogue.

Would you like to become a trainer or peer educator? Always welcome, please contact Lilly: lilly@emancipator.nl. Or check the calendar if there are upcoming trainings.

Contact us through info@emancipator.nl. Or fill out the form below, then we can help you faster.

We dream of a better, more beautiful world, where boys and men can be human, gender-based violence no longer exists, caring tasks are shared fairly and everyone can do and be who and what they want. The name ‘IMAGINE’ comes from a project we did in 2016-2018 with partner organizations MÄN (Sweden) and The Good Lad Initiative (now Beyond Equality, UK) and at the time stood for Inspiring Male Action on Gender INequality in Europe. In that project, we developed a toolkit with methods of work for peer educators to engage boys and men in preventing (sexual) violence. The toolkit we developed in that project still forms the basis of the workshops we offer, now covering other topics as well.

Our workshops and trainings are always tailor-made, adapted to the target group. We have experience with and programmes for children from primary school upwards, and regularly work at secondary schools, in youth work, at vocational schools, colleges and universities, but also in-house at all kinds of organizations and companies. Our programs can contribute to your marketing or communication team, your teaching team, your HR department, as well as have value in the board room. We like to work with groups with only men (or people socialized as men), because we believe that they in particular should become part of the solution, but our programmes are, of course, also suitable for mixed groups.

In several projects, we have created toolkits for workshops and trainings on themes related to masculinity. These toolkits are often the starting point of the programmes we offer.

• IMAGINE: Inspiring Male Action on Gender INequality in Europe
• Talent development of boys: guide for professionals in and around education
• EquiTeens: Promotion of gender equality and non-violent relationships for young teenagers
• EquAlley: Tackling street harassment & gender stereotypes in youngsters
• Breaking the Cycle: Engaging men in gender equality
• How do you start the conversation? Approaches to street harassment in Utrecht
• Proud Sons Proud Fathers: Are you the father you want to be?

Most of these toolkits are also available in print. If you would like to receive one, come to an event, or email us your address and tell us which toolkit you want and how many copies.

The price of our workshops depends on length and target group, feel free to contact us for a free quote: info@emancipator.nl.

In education, we are regularly able to offer workshops and training free of charge through grants or projects, depending on your location and age group. Contact us for the possibilities, or keep an eye on our social media or newsletter for opportunities.