The Paniamor Foundation, a Costa Rican non-profit organization with a 38-year history, was awarded the 2025 Gender Equality Prize by the European Union (EU) in Costa Rica and its Member States. The award recognizes the foundation’s long-standing commitment to promoting gender equality and its transformative approach to addressing the rights of girls and adolescent women. Through its programs, Paniamor works to prevent violence, discrimination, and social exclusion that these groups face due to their dual age and gender status.
The EU highlighted the foundation’s work in its seventh edition of the Gender Equality Award, emphasizing the cross-cutting integration of gender considerations in Paniamor’s institutional, programmatic, and associative management. The award ceremony was attended by EU representatives, including Ambassador Pierre-Louis Lempereur, ambassadors of Member States, and officials from government and international organizations. Ambassador Lempereur underscored the importance of recognizing not only achievements but also vision, perseverance, and courage in transforming deeply entrenched societal issues, such as gender-based violence.
Marcela González Coto, program director of Paniamor, stated that the award is both recognition and a renewed impetus for the organization. It reinforces the foundation’s commitment to ensuring that girls and women in Costa Rica are active participants in social transformation, their voices are heard, and their agency strengthened. Paniamor views gender equality as a continuously evolving goal, requiring ongoing engagement and action in partnership with those directly affected.
Founded in 1987 and declared of public interest in 1989, the Paniamor Foundation works in collaboration with the State, private sector, and civil society to promote structural and cultural change, aiming to build a culture of rights and prevent violence and exclusion affecting children and adolescents. For more than a decade, the organization has implemented a Transformative Gender Approach as a guiding principle, challenging patriarchal power structures and fostering equitable and just social models.
In 2017, the foundation launched the “Safe and Strong” program, specifically designed to promote the rights of girls and adolescent women. The program creates protective, participatory, and empowering environments to prevent the violence, discrimination, and exclusion that they face, reflecting Paniamor’s ongoing dedication to gender equality and social transformation in Costa Rica.
