👥 Partners: UN Women, Beity Association, Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), Internal Security Forces (ISF)

🎯 Objective: Moving from training to sustainable institutional change by equipping officers to train their own teams on gender-sensitive security strategies.

💡 From Trainees to Trainers: Creating a Lasting Impact

One of the greatest challenges in institutional reform is making sure that change doesn’t stop with a single training. Policies shift, leadership changes, and knowledge often remains with those who attended the sessions.

This is why coaching security personnel to become trainers is the most critical step in ensuring that gender-responsive security is not just a concept, but a lived practice in the Lebanese Army and ISF.

Over a full year, with working with them, officers moved from learning to leading, taking the tools and frameworks they had gained and adapting them to train their colleagues. This coaching approach ensured that gender-sensitive policing and leadership become embedded in their institutions, not just in individual mindsets.

🔹 What Coaching Looked Like in Practice

Unlike traditional training, coaching is about guidance, reflection, and long-term skills development. The sessions focused on:

• Building facilitation skills so officers could confidently deliver gender-focused sessions within their teams.
• Scenario-based learning to help officers handle real-world challenges when implementing gender-sensitive policies.
• Problem-solving coaching, ensuring officers were prepared to navigate resistance and push for institutional buy-in.
• Developing tailored training plans, adapted to the unique needs of their respective security units.

Coaching isn’t about delivering more information—it’s about equipping security personnel with the ability to transfer knowledge and sustain change.

📊 What This Program Achieved

✔ Officers are now confident in delivering gender-focused training to their own units.
✔ Gender mainstreaming is no longer seen as an external agenda but an internal security priority.
✔ A structured coaching model has been created, ensuring that future security training includes gender-responsive frameworks.

This is what real institutional change looks like—when those who once received training are now leading the transformation themselves.

💡 Personal Reflection

*”Watching these officers evolve from participants to trainers has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my work. Coaching isn’t about handing over knowledge—it’s about building ownership, confidence, and a sense of responsibility for lasting change.

Security forces are often seen as rigid institutions, resistant to change, but this experience has proven otherwise. When given the tools, the right guidance, and the opportunity to lead, these officers demonstrated their commitment to integrating gender-responsive security into their daily work. I am proud to have served alongside them—not just as a trainer, but as a coach invested in their success.”*